
Jonathan Seaquist
Senior lecturer

AVHRR Derived Phenological Change in the Sahel and Soudan, Africa, 1982 - 2005
Author
Summary, in English
The Sahel region of Africa has experienced a decrease in rainfall from the early 1960s to mid 1990s. Recent studies have detected an increased in NDVI amplitude and growing season integrated NDVI for the region since 1982. However, these studies have not examined how plant phenology has changed. Phenology examines life cycle events such as bud burst and leaf senescence. Using the software TIMESAT to estimate phenological parameters from the GlMMS AVHRR NDVI dataset, we have found significant positive trends for the length of the growing and end of the growing season for the Soudan and Guinean regions, but significant trends in the Sahel could not be detected. The geographical extent of these trends contrasts with the more northern extent of positive trends of NDVI amplitude and growing season integrated NDVI. Results suggest two types of "greening" trends associated with rainfall change since the drought in the early 1980s. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Department/s
- Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
Publishing year
2007
Language
English
Pages
385-392
Publication/Series
Remote Sensing of Environment
Volume
108
Issue
4
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Physical Geography
Keywords
- Africa
- TIMESAT
- AVHRR NDVI time series
- Sahel
- phenology
Status
Published
Research group
- remote sensing
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0034-4257