Abstract
The Wenchuan earthquake was a deadly earthquake that occurred on May 12, 2008, in Sichuan province of China. With the help of classic statistic methods, including arithmetic mean, standard deviation and linear trend estimation, vegetation restoration was recognized by analyzing spatio-temporal features of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) before and after this earthquake. Results indicate: (1) spatial distribution of NDVI mean values remains similar from 1998 to 2011. Higher values are mainly found in north, whereas lower values are mainly distrib- uted over southeast, which is in good correlation with elevation and landform. Vegetation damage is at different levels in different seismic intensity (SI) regions: the higher SI is, theworsevegetation damage is. (2) Over the whole region, standard deviation is bigger after earthquake than before. Both absolute and relative changes in ecosystem stability increase with increasing SI. In different counties, variation of ecosystem stability is more obvious after earthquake, increase of standard deviation is approximately 6.5 times. Relatively, vegetation regionalization is the smallest analysis unit. Consequently, changes resulting from earthquake are unobvious. (3) Linear trend estimation coefficient increases from 0.0079 before the earthquake to 0.0359 after the earthquake in this whole region. This indicates that the plant ecosystem is rapidly restored between 2009 and 2011. The biggest linear trend is for the hill region, indicating good plant restoration and increase after earthquake. Fluctuation of linear trend estimation coefficient in different counties is more obvious after earthquake. Vegetation restoration after earthquake is most obvious in the regions that suffered the greatest SI (SI10 and SI11). In contrast, fluctuation in linear trend estimation coefficient of annual NDVI mean value for different classes of vegetation is more obvious before earthquake. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. (DOI: 10.1117/1.JRS.8.083651)
Highlights
Vegetation is one of the most important components in a terrestrial ecosystem
The highest normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) value is in Pingwu and the lowest value is in Shifang, corresponding to no difference in NDVI before and after the earthquake
The Wenchuan earthquake was taken as the case study for this paper
Summary
Vegetation is one of the most important components in a terrestrial ecosystem It is regarded as the hinge of the cycle of mass and energy fluxes of ecosystem, and drives the evolvement and development of an ecosystem.[1] Distribution and growth of vegetation are determined by environmental factors, such as water, heat energy, and nutrient availability, and their changes are logged by plant. Water and heat availability are the most important Popular study topics include the relationship between precipitation and the composition and distribution of vegetation population on an annual scale, spatio-temporal vegetation growth feature and rainfall and air temperature on season and month scale,[2,3,4,5] and so on. Many unexpected natural hazards, such as landslide, mudslide, earthquake, drought, flood and freezing, impact badly on the growth and spatial distribution of vegetation.[6,7,8,9]
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