Global spatial distribution of vegetation and 20-years dynamic changes

• Published in: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science
• Main Authors: Huo, Sihui, Sun, Qing, Shuai, Yanmin, Shao, Congying, Huang, Jiapeng
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: IOP Publishing 2022
• Subjects: South Pole; South pole; Siberia
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1755-1315/1087/1/012048; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1087/1/012048; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/1087/1/012048/pdf

Abstract Global spatial distribution of vegetation is determined jointly by climate, monsoon, ocean current and human activities. In recent decades, surface vegetation changes caused by global warming, extreme climate events and intensified human activities need a further understood. In this paper, we adopted available MODIS land cover dataset (MCD12Q1) to investigate the spatial distribution feature of global vegetation sand dynamics during the past 20 years. Results show that: (1) the spatial distribution pattern of global vegetation formed by the long-term ecosystem evolution exhibits stable with less variation in both latitude and vertical dimensions. Generally, the percent of forest, shrubland, grass and cropland respectively are 15.27%, 9.39%, 39.46% and 8.91% of surface covers, with a distinct land cover transition trend from rainforest at equator region to moss and lichen at the north and south pole. (2) In the past 20 years, the global forest land decreased by 3.0×10 5 km 2 , with an average annual decrease of 1.255%, open shrubs experienced slight fluctuations in 2001-2017 and increased sharply by 1.6×10 5 km 2 in 2017-2018. And the grassland, croplands and cropland/natural vegetation mosaics had different degrees of growth rate, with an average annual dynamic increase of 0.021%, 0.019% and 0.502%, respectively. (3) There are about 4.2×10 6 km 2 of forest changed into grassland in West Siberia and the Amazon, and 2.5×10 6 km 2 of grassland into shrubs, as well as 1.9×10 6 km 2 of grassland vegetation into farmland, and 9.4×10 4 km 2 of forest into shrubs.