The MEdium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) can be used to monitor vegetation dynamics at regional to global scales. However, the spatial resolutions provided by this sensor (300 or 1200 m) might not be appropriate to monitor fragmented landscapes. This is why the synergistic use of MERIS full resolution (300 m) and a high spatial resolution land use/land cover database (25 m) is studied...

Introduction Conclusions References

Management of water levels for flood control, water quality, and water safety purposes has become a priority for many lakes worldwide. However, the effects of water level management on the distribution and composition of aquatic vegetation has received little attention. Relevant studies have used either limited short-term or discrete long-term data and thus are either narrowly applicable or eas...

We evaluated the impact of shoreline dynamics on fringing vegetation density at mid- and low-marsh elevations at a high-energy site in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Particularly, we selected eight unprotected shoreline stretches (75 m each) at a historically eroding site and measured their inter-annual lateral movement rate using the DSAS method for three consecutive years. We observed high inte...

Soil properties are well known to affect vegetation, but the role of soil heterogeneity in the patterning of vegetation dynamics is poorly documented. We asked whether the location of an ecotone separating grass-dominated and sparsely vegetated areas reflected only historical variation in degradation or was related to variation in inherent soil properties. We then asked whether changes in the c...

Rainfall observations in the Sahel region of West Africa show significant variability at the timescale of decades. Here we explore the mechanisms of this lowfrequency variability using a coupled biosphere-atmosphere model which includes explicit representation of vegetation dynamics. By forcing the model with the observed sea surface temperature (SST) of the tropical Atlantic Ocean during the p...