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Monitoring System for Assessment of Vegetation Sensitivity to El-Niño over Africa

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Advances in GIScience

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((LNGC))

Abstract

The study investigated vulnerability of vegetation to El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) over Africa by correlating Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and two ENSO indices, namely Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) and Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). The study developed a new monitoring approach (ENSO vulnerability assessment system) that examined and quantified associations between monthly maximum NDVI anomalies and month-to-month correlations with the ENSO indices over the vegetated land areas of Africa throughout the period from 1982 to 2006 at the pixel scale. This system was engaged for an assessment of the long-time vegetation sensitivity to ENSO warm events occurred during the study period. A map of vegetation vulnerability to ENSO was produced. Areas with various vulnerability degrees were measured within main vegetation cover classes. The results suggested that the vulnerability of vegetated tropical land surfaces to climate extremes like EL Nino depends considerably on vegetation type. In particular, it could be shown that equatorial forest areas are more reliable to drought stress than other wooded and non-wooded vegetation categories.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of GIS and Remote Sensing, Institute of Geography, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Goldschmidtstr. 5, Goldschmidtstr, 37077 Göttingen

    Pavel Propastin

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  1. Pavel Propastin
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Correspondence to Pavel Propastin .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leibniz Universität Hannover Inst. Kartographie und Geoinformatik, Appelstraße 9a, 30167, Hannover, Germany

    Monika Sester  & Volker Paelke  & 

  2. TU Dresden Fak. Forst-, Geo- und Hydrowissenschaften, Helmholtzstr. 10, 01069 , Dresden, Germany

    Lars Bernard

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© 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Propastin, P. (2009). Monitoring System for Assessment of Vegetation Sensitivity to El-Niño over Africa. In: Sester, M., Bernard, L., Paelke, V. (eds) Advances in GIScience. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00318-9_17

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