The analysis of vegetation dynamics and agricultural production is essential in semi-arid regions, in particular as a consequence of the frequent occurrence of periods of drought. In this paper, a multi-temporal series of the Normalized Difference of Vegetation Index (NDVI), derived from SPOT-VEGETATION (between September 1998 and August 2013) and TERRA-MODIS satellite data (between September 2...

To address devastating land desertification and soil erosion and to improve human well-being, central government in China has implemented a number of ecological restoration programs. It is essential to rigorously monitor the dynamic of vegetation activity and evaluate the effectiveness of these programs, not only to provide scientific support for ecosystem monitoring in arid and semi-arid regio...

Arid ecosystems are characterized by high spatial heterogeneity, and the variation among vegetation patches is a clear example. Soil biotic and abiotic factors associated with these patches have also been well documented as highly heterogeneous in space. Given the low vegetation cover and little precipitation in arid ecosystems, soil microorganisms are the main drivers of nutrient cycling. None...

[1] Hydrological and aeolian processes redistribute sediments and nutrients within arid landscapes with important effects on the composition and structure of vegetation. Despite the relevance of wind and water erosion to the dynamics of arid and semiarid ecosystems, the interactions between these two processes remain poorly understood. In this paper we present the results of an intensive set of...

Arid grassland ecosystems are widely distributed across Central Asia. However, there is a lack of research and observations of the land–atmosphere exchange of water and heat in the arid grasslands in this region, particularly over complex surfaces. In this study, systematic observations were conducted from 2013 to 2015 using an HL20 Bowen ratio and TDR300 and WatchDog1400 systems to determine t...

This paper evaluates the usefulness of the hyperspectral imager (HSI) onboard Chinese HJ-1-A small satellite in vegetation mapping. Fractional vegetation cover (FVC) is an important surface microclimate parameter for characterizing land surface vegetation cover as well as the most effective indicator for assessing desertification and crop growth condition. The HJ-1/HSI data were used to calcula...

Variability in woody plant species, vegetation assemblages and anthropogenic activities derails the efforts to have common approaches for estimating biomass and carbon stocks in Africa. In order to suggest management options, it is important to understand the vegetation dynamics and the major drivers governing the observed conditions. This study uses data from 29 sentinel landscapes (4640 plots...

Improving the capability of land-surface process models to simulate soil moisture assists in better understanding the atmosphere-land interaction. In semi-arid regions, due to limited near-surface observational data and large errors in large-scale parameters obtained by the remote sensing method, there exist uncertainties in land surface parameters, which can cause large offsets between the sim...