An Assessment of Remotely Sensed Land Surface Phenology for Detecting Spatio-Temporal Landscape Change Patterns: Arizona and its National Parks

摘要

The Arizona landscape is undergoing changes in vegetation growth patterns that are due to disturbances related to wildfire, extreme drought and precipitation events, and human interactions. Vegetation phenology is one of the vital signs for evaluating and monitoring ecosystems that are of interest to the US National Park Monitoring Network. Long term MODIS and AVHRR time series vegetation index data (1989-current) are used to characterize and examine vegetation growth trajectories and phenology of the Arizona landscape with a focus on National Parks. The phenological metrics include: time of start, peak and end of the growing season and seasonally integrated vegetation index value metrics related to biomass production. Patterns in stable and anomalous vegetation dynamics were examined visually and quantified by using pheno-metrics and trend statistics. The spatio-temporal phenological characterization show distinctive vegetation response patterns and trajectories that provide a means to monitor the natural resources of Arizona and its National Parks.