Rosan, TM, Aragão, LEOC, Oliveras, I et al. (4 more authors) (2019) Extensive twenty-first century woody encroachment in South America’s Savanna. Geophysical Research Letters, 46 (12). pp. 6594-6603. ISSN 0094-8276
Abstract
Woody encroachment is occurring in all tropical savannas of the world. However, in the Brazilian savanna (the Cerrado), the extent of this phenomenon is still poorly documented. Here, woody encroachment was quantified throughout the Cerrado biome and transitional ecotones using a trend analysis of the annual maximum of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The associations with potential local drivers, such as fire and land use regime, were assessed using satellite data of land cover and fire regime. We found that 19% of the remaining native vegetation showed significant evidence of woody encroachment in the last 15 years, and 7% exhibited degradation processes. The local factors that favored woody expansion in 19% of the biome were a decrease of fire (34%) and land use abandonment (26%). Our study highlights that local human‐associated drivers are playing a major role in woody encroachment and savanna degradation.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2019, The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs License [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/], which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
Keywords: | remote sensing; EVI; savanna; woody encroachment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Geography (Leeds) > Ecology & Global Change (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 13 Jun 2019 15:30 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Geophysical Union |
Identification Number: | 10.1029/2019GL082327 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:147181 |