Drought Dynamics and Vegetation Productivity in Different Land Management Systems of Eastern Cape, South Africa—A Remote Sensing Perspective
Graw, Valerie, Ghazaryan, Gohar, Dall, Karen, Delgado Gómez, Andoni, Abdel-Hamid, Ayman, Jordaan, Andries, Piroska, Ruben, Post, Joachim, Szarzynski, Joerg, Walz, Yvonne and Dubovyk, Olena, (2017). Drought Dynamics and Vegetation Productivity in Different Land Management Systems of Eastern Cape, South Africa—A Remote Sensing Perspective. Sustainability, 9(10), 1-19
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Sub-type Journal article Author Graw, Valerie
Ghazaryan, Gohar
Dall, Karen
Delgado Gómez, Andoni
Abdel-Hamid, Ayman
Jordaan, Andries
Piroska, Ruben
Post, Joachim
Szarzynski, Joerg
Walz, Yvonne
Dubovyk, OlenaTitle Drought Dynamics and Vegetation Productivity in Different Land Management Systems of Eastern Cape, South Africa—A Remote Sensing Perspective Appearing in Sustainability Volume 9 Issue No. 10 Publication Date 2017-09-26 Place of Publication Basel Publisher MDPI AG Start page 1 End page 19 Language eng Abstract Eastern Cape Province in South Africa has experienced extreme drought events during the last decade. In South Africa, different land management systems exist belonging to two different land tenure classes: commercial large scale farming and communal small-scale subsistence farming. Communal lands are often reported to be affected by land degradation and drought events among others considered as trigger for this process. Against this background,we analyzed vegetation response to drought in different land management and land tenure systems through assessing vegetation productivity trends and monitoring the intensity, frequency and distribution of the drought hazard in grasslands and communal and commercial croplands during drought and non-drought conditions. For the observation period 2000–2016, we used time series of 250 m Vegetation Condition Index (VCI) based on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Climate Hazard Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) precipitation data with 5 km resolution. For the assessment of vegetation dynamics, we: (1) analyzed vegetation productivity in Eastern Cape over the last 16 years with EVI; (2) analyzed the impact of drought events on vegetation productivity in grasslands as well as commercial and communal croplands; and (3) compared precipitation-vegetation dynamics between the drought season 2015/2016 and the non-drought season 2011/2012. Change in total annual vegetation productivity could detect drought years while drought dynamics during the season could be rather monitored by the VCI. Correlation of vegetation condition and precipitation indicated areas experiencing significant vegetation productivity trends showing low and even negative correlation coefficients indicating other drivers for productivity change and drought impact besides rainfall. UNBIS Thesaurus SOUTH AFRICA Keyword Drought Hazard Monitoring
Remote Sensing
Land degradation
Vegetation condition index
Land management systems
Land tenureCopyright Holder Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI) Copyright Year 2017 Copyright type Creative commons ISSN 20711050 DOI 10.3390/su9101728 -
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