Mismatches between vegetation greening and primary productivity trends in South Asia – A satellite evidence

Abstract

Vegetation greening contributes to gross carbon sequestration by plants and thus plays a vital role in mitigation of global warming. Terrestrial vegetation has a significant greening trend in South Asia (SA); however, it remains elusive how this greening translates to gross primary production (GPP) (proxy of gross carbon uptake by plants at ecosystem scale) in SA. In this study, we investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of GPP in correspondence to leaf area increase (based on leaf area index as proxy of greening) over SA using remote sensing driven data on Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computation, during 2003–2017. We found a much weaker increase of GPP in SA as compared to the overall greening trend, primarily attributed to the disturbance in cropland activities of the region. Especially, greening was highly significant (p < 0.05) over the most irrigated and fertile Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) of SA, however GPP trend was non-significant (p > 0.05) over this region. Further, natural vegetation areas also showed low vegetation greening and GPP increase during the study period. The analysis of the potential drivers revealed that both climatic and anthropogenic stresses (intensive cropping, population pressure) had a negative impact on the regional GPP, especially in IGP. Our study indicated that the overwhelming greening of SA because of enhanced cropland activities, did not contribute much to GPP over the region. The restricted cropland canopy carbon uptake and low GPP increase in forests led to a lower than expected increase of gross carbon assimilation over SA in the context of climate changes and anthropogenic disturbances. Our study inferred that effective reforestation programs and conservation of natural vegetation areas are essential in SA for efficient vegetation carbon assimilation.