Dataset Information

A Landsat-based vegetation trend product of the Tibetan Plateau for the time-period 1990-2018.

ABSTRACT: The Tibetan Plateau is a unique, biodiverse ecosystem with an important role in the climate and hydrological system of Asia. Its vegetation supports important functions including fodder provision, erosion prevention and water retention. Assessing vegetation trends of the Tibetan Plateau is crucial to understand effects of recent climate and land-use changes. Most existing vegetation trend products covering the entire Tibetan Plateau have a coarse spatial grain and cover short temporal ranges. This hampers their applicability in studies conducted at local scales where land-use decisions take place and at time scales where climate changes become apparent. Here, we present vegetation trend products for the entire Tibetan Plateau at a spatial resolution of 30 m for the time period 1990-2018. These products include results of a modified Mann-Kendall trend test applied to annual Landsat-based NDVI mosaics, composed from all satellite observations acquired during the vegetation periods as well as NDVI difference images. These data can be valuable to many researchers including for example wildlife ecologists, rangeland experts and climate change researchers.

SUBMITTER: Fassnacht FE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6544617 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A Landsat-based vegetation trend product of the Tibetan Plateau for the time-period 1990-2018.

Fassnacht Fabian Ewald FE Schiller Christopher C Kattenborn Teja T Zhao Xinquan X Qu Jiapeng J

Scientific data 20190531 1

The Tibetan Plateau is a unique, biodiverse ecosystem with an important role in the climate and hydrological system of Asia. Its vegetation supports important functions including fodder provision, erosion prevention and water retention. Assessing vegetation trends of the Tibetan Plateau is crucial to understand effects of recent climate and land-use changes. Most existing vegetation trend products covering the entire Tibetan Plateau have a coarse spatial grain and cover short temporal ranges. Th ...[more]

PMID: 31148554

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Project description:Rangeland degradation has been identified as a serious concern in alpine regions of western China on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau (QTP). Numerous government-sponsored programs have been initiated, including many that feature long-term grazing prohibitions and some that call for eliminating pastoralism altogether. As well, government programs have long favored eliminating plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae), assumed to contribute to degraded conditions. However, vegetation on the QTP evolved in the presence of herbivory, suggesting that deleterious effects from grazing are, to some extent, compensated for by reduced plant-plant competition. We examined the dynamics of common steppe ecosystem species as well as physical indicators of rangeland stress by excluding livestock and reducing pika abundance on experimental plots, and following responses for 4 years. We established 12 fenced livestock exclosures within pastures grazed during winter by local pastoralists, and removed pikas on half of these. We established paired, permanent vegetation plots within and outside exclosures and measured indices of erosion and biomass of common plant species. We observed modest restoration of physical site conditions (reduced bare soil, erosion, greater vegetation cover) with both livestock exclusion and pika reduction. As expected in areas protected from grazing, we observed a reduction in annual productivity of plant species avoided by livestock and assumed to compete poorly when protected from grazing. Contrary to expectation, we observed similar reductions in annual productivity among palatable, perennial graminoids under livestock exclusion. The dominant grass, Stipa purpurea, displayed evidence of density-dependent growth, suggesting that intra-specific competition exerted a regulatory effect on annual production in the absence of grazing. Complete grazing bans on winter pastures in steppe habitats on the QTP may assist in the recovery of highly eroded pastures, but may not increase annual vegetative production.

Dataset Information

A Landsat-based vegetation trend product of the Tibetan Plateau for the time-period 1990-2018.

Publications

A Landsat-based vegetation trend product of the Tibetan Plateau for the time-period 1990-2018.

Similar Datasets

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