scholarly journals Assessing the Impacts of the 2009/2010 Drought on Vegetation Indices, Normalized Difference Water Index, and Land Surface Temperature in Southwestern China

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqiang Zhang ◽  
Yasushi Yamaguchi ◽  
Fei Li ◽  
Bin He ◽  
Yaning Chen

Droughts are projected to increase in severity and frequency on both regional and global scales. Despite the increasing occurrence and intensity of the 2009/2010 drought in southwestern China, the impacts of drought on vegetation in this region remain unclear. We examined the impacts of the 2009/2010 drought in southwestern China on vegetation by calculating the standardized anomalies of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI), and Land Surface Temperature (LST). The standardized anomalies of NDVI, EVI, and NDWI exhibited positively skewed frequency distributions, while the standardized anomalies of LST exhibited a negatively skewed frequency distribution. These results implied that the NDVI, EVI, and NDWI declined, while LST increased in the 2009/2010 drought-stricken vegetated areas during the drought period. The responses of vegetation to the 2009/2010 drought differed substantially among biomes. Savannas, croplands, and mixed forests were more vulnerable to the 2009/2010 drought than deciduous forest and grasslands, while evergreen forest was resistant to the 2009/2010 drought in southwestern China. We concluded that the 2009/2010 drought had negative impacts on vegetation in southwestern China. The resulting assessment on the impacts of drought assists in evaluating and mitigating its adverse effects in southwestern China.

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4098
Author(s):  
Weixiao Han ◽  
Chunlin Huang ◽  
Hongtao Duan ◽  
Juan Gu ◽  
Jinliang Hou

Lake phenology is essential for understanding the lake freeze-thaw cycle effects on terrestrial hydrological processes. The Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) has the most extensive ice reserve outside of the Arctic and Antarctic poles and is a sensitive indicator of global climate changes. Qinghai Lake, the largest lake in the QTP, plays a critical role in climate change. The freeze-thaw cycles of lakes were studied using daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data ranging from 2000–2018 in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. Surface water/ice area, coverage, critical dates, surface water, and ice cover duration were extracted. Random forest (RF) was applied with a classifier accuracy of 0.9965 and a validation accuracy of 0.8072. Compared with six common water indexes (tasseled cap wetness (TCW), normalized difference water index (NDWI), modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI), automated water extraction index (AWEI), water index 2015 (WI2015) and multiband water index (MBWI)) and ice threshold value methods, the critical freeze-up start (FUS), freeze-up end (FUE), break-up start (BUS), and break-up end (BUE) dates were extracted by RF and validated by visual interpretation. The results showed an R2 of 0.99, RMSE of 3.81 days, FUS and BUS overestimations of 2.50 days, and FUE and BUE underestimations of 0.85 days. RF performed well for lake freeze-thaw cycles. From 2000 to 2018, the FUS and FUE dates were delayed by 11.21 and 8.21 days, respectively, and the BUS and BUE dates were 8.59 and 1.26 days early, respectively. Two novel key indicators, namely date of the first negative land surface temperature (DFNLST) and date of the first positive land surface temperature (DFPLST), were proposed to comprehensively delineate lake phenology: DFNLST was approximately 37 days before FUS, and DFPLST was approximately 20 days before BUS, revealing that the first negative and first positive land surface temperatures occur increasingly earlier.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (135) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Ismael Abbas Hurat

This paper analyzes the effects of urban density, vegetation cover, and water body on thermal islands measured by land surface temperature in Al Anbar province, Iraq using multi-temporal Landsat images. Images from Landsat 7 ETM and Landsat 8 OLI for the years 2000, 2014, and 2018 were collected, pre-processed, and anal yzed. The results suggested that the strongest correlation was found between the Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) and the surface temperature. The correlation between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the surface temperature was slightly weaker compared to that of NDBI. However, the weakest correlation was found between the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and the temperature. The results obtained in this research may help the decision makers to take actions to reduce the effects of thermal islands by looking at the details in the produced maps and the analyzed values of these spectral indices.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 323
Author(s):  
Liang Chen ◽  
Xuelei Wang ◽  
Xiaobin Cai ◽  
Chao Yang ◽  
Xiaorong Lu

Rapid urbanization greatly alters land surface vegetation cover and heat distribution, leading to the development of the urban heat island (UHI) effect and seriously affecting the healthy development of cities and the comfort of living. As an indicator of urban health and livability, monitoring the distribution of land surface temperature (LST) and discovering its main impacting factors are receiving increasing attention in the effort to develop cities more sustainably. In this study, we analyzed the spatial distribution patterns of LST of the city of Wuhan, China, from 2013 to 2019. We detected hot and cold poles in four seasons through clustering and outlier analysis (based on Anselin local Moran’s I) of LST. Furthermore, we introduced the geographical detector model to quantify the impact of six physical and socio-economic factors, including the digital elevation model (DEM), index-based built-up index (IBI), modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI), normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), population, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the LST distribution of Wuhan. Finally, to identify the influence of land cover on temperature, the LST of croplands, woodlands, grasslands, and built-up areas was analyzed. The results showed that low temperatures are mainly distributed over water and woodland areas, followed by grasslands; high temperatures are mainly concentrated over built-up areas. The maximum temperature difference between land covers occurs in spring and summer, while this difference can be ignored in winter. MNDWI, IBI, and NDVI are the key driving factors of the thermal values change in Wuhan, especially of their interaction. We found that the temperature of water area and urban green space (woodlands and grasslands) tends to be 5.4 °C and 2.6 °C lower than that of built-up areas. Our research results can contribute to the urban planning and urban greening of Wuhan and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the city.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bipin Acharya ◽  
Chunxiang Cao ◽  
Min Xu ◽  
Laxman Khanal ◽  
Shahid Naeem ◽  
...  

Dengue fever is one of the leading public health problems of tropical and subtropical countries across the world. Transmission dynamics of dengue fever is largely affected by meteorological and environmental factors, and its temporal pattern generally peaks in hot-wet periods of the year. Despite this continuously growing problem, the temporal dynamics of dengue fever and associated potential environmental risk factors are not documented in Nepal. The aim of this study was to fill this research gap by utilizing epidemiological and earth observation data in Chitwan district, one of the frequent dengue outbreak areas of Nepal. We used laboratory confirmed monthly dengue cases as a dependent variable and a set of remotely sensed meteorological and environmental variables as explanatory factors to describe their temporal relationship. Descriptive statistics, cross correlation analysis, and the Poisson generalized additive model were used for this purpose. Results revealed that dengue fever is significantly associated with satellite estimated precipitation, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) synchronously and with different lag periods. However, the associations were weak and insignificant with immediate daytime land surface temperature (dLST) and nighttime land surface temperature (nLST), but were significant after 4–5 months. Conclusively, the selected Poisson generalized additive model based on the precipitation, dLST, and NDVI explained the largest variation in monthly distribution of dengue fever with minimum Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) and maximum R-squared. The best fit model further significantly improved after including delayed effects in the model. The predicted cases were reasonably accurate based on the comparison of 10-fold cross validation and observed cases. The lagged association found in this study could be useful for the development of remote sensing-based early warning forecasts of dengue fever.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasha Abou Samra

Abstract Land surface temperature (LST) is a significant environmental variable that is appreciably influenced by land use /land cover changes. The main goal of this research was to quantify the impacts of land use/land cover change (LULC) from the drying of Toshka Lakes on LST by remote sensing and GIS techniques. Landsat series TM and OLI satellite images were used to estimate LST from 2001 to 2019. Automated Water Extraction Index (AWEI) was applied to extract water bodies from the research area. Optimized Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index (OSAVI) was utilized to predict the reclaimed land in the Toshka region until 2019. The results indicated a decrease in the lakes by about 1517.79 km2 with an average increase in LST by about 25.02 °C between 2001 and 2019. It was observed that the dried areas of the lakes were converted to bare soil and are covered by salt crusts. The results indicated that the land use change was a significant driver for the increased LST. The mean annual LST increased considerably by 0.6 °C/y between 2001 and 2019. A strong negative correlation between LST and Toshka Lakes area (R-square = 0.98) estimated from regression analysis implied that Toshka Lakes drying considerably affected the microclimate of the study area. Severe drought conditions, soil degradation, and many environmental issues were predicted due to the rise of LST in the research area. There is an urgent need to develop favorable strategies for sustainable environmental management in the Toshka region.


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