Abstract
Abstract. The leaf area index of Sahelian rangelands and related variables such as the vegetation cover fraction, the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation and the clumping index were measured between 2005 and 2017 in the Gourma region of northern Mali. These variables, known as climate essential variables, were derived from the acquisition and the processing of hemispherical photographs taken along 1 km linear sampling transects for five contrasted canopies and one millet field. The same sampling protocol was applied in a seasonally inundated Acacia open forest, along a 0.5 km transect, by taking photographs of the understorey and the tree canopy. These observations collected over more than a decade, in a remote and not very accessible region, provide a relevant and unique data set that can be used for a better understanding of the Sahelian vegetation response to the current rainfall changes. The collected data can also be used for satellite product evaluation and land surface model development and validation. This paper aims to present the field work that was carried out during 13 successive rainy seasons, the measured vegetation variables, and the associated open database. Finally, a few examples of data use are shown. DOI of the referenced data set: https://doi.org/10.17178/AMMA-CATCH.CE.Veg_Gh.
Highlights
The Global Climate Observing System, GCOS, identified the leaf area index, LAI, as one of the main terrestrial essential climate variables, ECVs, to be monitored from systematic long-term satellite and in situ measurements (GCOS, 2011; Bojinski et al, 2014)
LAI or PAI is related both to the fraction of absorbed photosynthetic active radiation (0.4–0.7 μm) by the green vegetation, fAPAR (Myneni and Williams, 1994; Fensholt et al, 2006), and to the canopy green cover fraction, fCover, i.e. the amount of green vegetation distributed in a horizontal plane (Carlson and Ripley, 1997)
The vegetation sites are located in north-east Mali, in the Gourma region which stretches from the loop of the Niger River southward down to the border with Burkina Faso
Summary
The Global Climate Observing System, GCOS, identified the leaf area index, LAI, as one of the main terrestrial essential climate variables, ECVs, to be monitored from systematic long-term satellite and in situ measurements (GCOS, 2011; Bojinski et al, 2014). The main objective of the current field monitoring is to document the seasonal, inter-annual and decadal variations of LAI and primary productivity in relation to the rainfall variability, at different spatio-temporal scales. This monitoring aims to provide relevant data to investigate how the WAM and its spatio-temporal variability affect the vegetation cover in central Sahel. We describe the experimental protocol used for the estimation of vegetation variables, the associated open database, and show a few examples of data use
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