Mapping Dynamic Processes of Land Cover Change in Arid Rangelands
Abstract
Despite the abundance of Earth Observation data (satellite and aerial imagery), which tracks the surface of the earth at up to daily time steps, there is currently no global analysis of land degradation focused on the world's drylands. Land cover change detection in forested systems has been advancing rapidly but far less attention has been paid to arid rangeland systems, which comprise nearly forty percent of the global land area and are facing some of the most rapid rates of climate change. While global scale characterizations of forest cover change and urbanization are feasible at multiple scales and alert systems are being developed and deployed to detect deforestation, global-scale monitoring of grassland degradation is not yet accurate or effective. This project is an effort to address the paucity of large-scale land cover data for arid regions of the world by developing a innovative method to detect, classify and map rangeland status. While nearly all operational land-cover mapping systems rely on categories and classification systems that focus on land-cover states at a particular point in time, we believe that significant progress can be made by focusing instead on categories that describe change in grassland systems. New classes for rangelands will highlight regions of degradation, composition shifts and abrupt transitions; i.e., processes rather than static states. Developing countries in arid regions of the world with extensive land areas and limited budgets need a method that links in situ biophysical data with data from earth observations, to provide a spatially contiguous map of estimated/predicted rangeland status for use in monitoring, reporting and planning. Our aim is to provide a data product that can be easily updated to simultaneously improve temporal frequency of assessment as well as spatial coverage.This information will facilitate robust assessments of the current status of rangelands, which will establish a baseline for monitoring progress toward reducing land degradation, enable spatial planning for focus on target areas. This work will be particularly relevant to resource managers and policy makers in arid countries who are required to report on progress toward targets of the SDGs, particularly for reporting on Desertification and in pursuit of Land Degradation Neutrality.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC23C..06A
- Keywords:
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- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1809 Desertification;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 4329 Sustainable development;
- NATURAL HAZARDS