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, Olena
    Title 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 tenure
    Copyright Holder Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
    Copyright Year 2017
    Copyright type Creative commons
    ISSN 20711050
    DOI 10.3390/su9101728
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    Created: Tue, 07 Nov 2017, 19:44:04 JST by Aarti Basnyat on behalf of UNU EHS