Woody Plant Cover Dynamics in Sahelian Drylands from Earth Observation Based Seasonal Metrics

Abstract:

Woody plants play an important role in drylands primary productivity and peoples' livelihood, however, due to their scattered appearance, quantifying and monitoring their abundance over a large area is challenging. From in situ measured woody cover we develop a phenology driven model to estimate the canopy cover of woody species in the Sahelian drylands. Annual maps are applied to monitor dynamics of woody populations in relation to climate and anthropogenic interference. The model estimates the total canopy cover of all woody phanerophytes and the concept is based on the significant difference in phenophases of dryland trees, shrubs and bushes as compared to that of the herbaceous plants. Whereas annual herbaceous are only green during the rainy season and senescence occurs shortly after flowering towards the last rains, most woody plants remain photosynthetically active over large parts of the year. We use Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and SPOT VEGETATION (VGT) seasonal metrics representing the dry season to reproduce in situ woody cover at 77 field sites (178 observations in 3x3 km plots between 2000 and 2014) in Niger, Mali and Senegal. The extrapolation to Sahel scale shows agreement between VGT and MODIS at an almost nine times higher woody cover than in the global tree cover product MOD44B which only captures trees of a certain minimum size. Trends over 15 years show that the pattern is closely related to population density and land cover/use. A negative woody cover change can be observed in densely populated areas, but a positive change is seen in sparsely populated regions. Whereas woody cover in cropland is generally stable, it is strongly positive in savannas and woodland. Discrepancies between the countries are huge and also deforestation can be observed at a more local scale. The method is applicable and derived woody cover maps of the Sahel are freely available. They represent an improvement of existing products and a contribution for future studies of drylands quantifying carbon stocks, climate change assessment, research on deforestation/degradation as well as parametrization of vegetation dynamic models.