Abstract

Land-cover change is a critical concern due to its climatic, ecological, and socioeconomic consequences. In this study, we used multiple variables including precipitation, vegetation index, surface soil moisture, and evapotranspiration obtained from different satellite sources to study their association with land-cover changes in the Mediterranean region. Both observational and modeling data were used for climatology and correlation analysis. Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) were used to extract surface soil moisture and evapotranspiration data. Intercomparing the results of FLDAS and GLDAS suggested that FLDAS data had better accuracy compared to GLDAS for its better coherence with observational data. Climate Hazards Group Infra-Red Precipitation with Station Data (version 2.0 final) (CHIRPS Pentad) were used to extract precipitation data while Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products were used to extract the vegetation indices used in this study. The land-cover change detection was demonstrated during the 2009–2018 period using MODIS Land-Cover data. Some of the barren and crop lands in Euphrates-Tigris and Algeria have converted to low-vegetated shrublands over the time, while shrublands and barren areas in Egypt’s southwestern Delta region became grasslands. These observations were well explained by changing trends of hydrological variables which showed that precipitation and soil moisture had higher values in the countries located to the east of the Mediterranean region compared to the ones on the west. For evapotranspiration, the countries in the north had lower values except for countries in Europe such as Bosnia, Romania, Slovenia, and countries in Africa such as Egypt and Libya. The enhanced vegetation index appeared to be decreasing from north to south, with countries in the north such as Germany, Romania, and Czechia having higher values, while countries in the south such as Libya, Egypt, and Iraq having lower trends. Time series analysis for selected countries was also done to understand the change in hydrological parameters, including Enhanced Vegetation Index, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture, which showed alternating drop and rise as well as stagnant values for different parameters in each country.

Highlights

  • Land cover is an important factor in maintaining environmental, climatic, ecological, and economical stability in a region, and tracking its changes is very important for planning for different fields of study in the Earth Sciences, especially climate changes

  • The biogeochemical effects of land-cover change change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through carbon storage or release and affects long wave radiation, while the biogeophysical effects of land-cover change changes the physical characteristics of the land surface, which in turn affects the distribution of surface energy and the circulation of water, which has an important impact on the climate (Pielke et al 2002)

  • The study found that climatology of soil moisture and ET obtained from FLDAS seems to have less noise compared to the same parameters obtained from Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS)

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Summary

Introduction

Land cover is an important factor in maintaining environmental, climatic, ecological, and economical stability in a region, and tracking its changes is very important for planning for different fields of study in the Earth Sciences, especially climate changes. The amount of solar energy reflected from a land surface can change the local surface energy balances (Dickinson 1983; Feddema et al 2005; Vargo et al 2013). The biogeochemical effects of land-cover change change the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through carbon storage or release and affects long (short) wave radiation, while the biogeophysical effects of land-cover change changes the physical characteristics of the land surface (such as surface albedo, surface emissivity, surface roughness, evapotranspiration, etc.), which in turn affects the distribution of surface energy and the circulation of water, which has an important impact on the climate (Pielke et al 2002). Changes in the surface albedo change the surface’s absorption of solar short-wave radiation and changes the leaf area index (vegetation coverage), which affects evapotranspiration and leads to redistribution of surface energy. There are studies which have shown how surface albedo impacts climate change like a study by Betts which concluded that the positive forcing induced by decreases in albedo can offset the negative forcing, that is expected from carbon sequestration in boreal forest areas, and some high-latitude

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