Abstract
The temporal evolution of vegetation is one of the best indicators of climate change, and many earth system models are dependent on an accurate understanding of this process. However, the effect of climate change is expected to vary from one land-cover type to another, due to the change in vegetation and environmental conditions. Therefore, it is pertinent to understand the effect of climate change by land-cover type to understand the regions that are most vulnerable to climate change. Hence, in this study we analyzed the temporal statistical trends (2001–2016) of the MODIS13Q1 normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to explore whether there are differences, by land-cover class and phytoclimatic type, in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands. We found 7.6% significant negative NDVI trends and 11.8% significant positive NDVI trends. Spatial patterns showed a non-random distribution. The Atlantic biogeographical region showed an unexpected 21% significant negative NDVI trends, and the Alpine region showed only 3.1% significant negative NDVI trends. We also found statistical differences between NDVI trends by land cover and phytoclimatic type. Variance explained by these variables was up to 35%. Positive trends were explained, above all, by land occupations, and negative trends were explained by phytoclimates. Warmer phytoclimatic classes of every general type and forest, as well as some agriculture land covers, showed negative trends.
Highlights
Vegetation and the climate system interact through feedback [1]
In the present paper, we only worked with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) because we considered that the coarse spatial and high temporal resolution of that sensor’s vegetation products permit us to understand the dynamics of the land surface at a regional scale [47], as applied to mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands
We could notice statistical differences in the average between the groups of these two classes (CLC and Allué phytoclimatic types) when we performed the analyses focused first on the significant negative trend sample and on the significant positive trend sample
Summary
It is known that plants control water, energy, carbon cycles, the exchange of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere (i.e., photosynthesis, respiration), and the influence on wind circulation [2,3]. This explains the importance of plants on Earth. Changes at the beginning and end of the growing season interact with the carbon cycle [8,9] In this sense, it is not surprising that, for some years, climate researchers focused on carbon balance and its relationship with the evolution of plants (for instance, References [10,11,12]). Thereby, it seems relevant to highlight that vegetation holds around 42% of the terrestrial carbon storage and assimilates about 20% of the annual anthropogenic emissions of that carbon [7,13]
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