Vegetation Dynamical Patterns Related to Rainfall Variability Analysed with Wavelet Coherency for Southern Africa

This study contributes to a better understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns of ecosystem dynamics in Southern Africa in response to climatic variability. First, we identified the areas where NDVI is covarying with precipitation, and where rainfall anomalies are correlated with NDVI anomalies. The results suggest that these correlations are related to quasi-periodicities in rainfall patterns. Further, we studies the strength of these relationships over time, and analysed the spatial patterns of these correlations and relate them to physical properties, like soil type, vegetation type and topography. In order to do this, we proposed a new methodology based on wavelet transforms of the time series of NDVI and rainfall.