Changes in vegetation-water response in the Sahel-Sudan during recent decades
Tingting Lu, Wenmin Zhang, Christin Abel, Stéphanie Horion, Martin Brandt, Ke Huang, Rasmus Fensholt
Abstract
Study region: The Africa Sahel-Sudan region, defined by annual rainfall between 150 and 1200 mm. Study focus: Understanding the mechanism of vegetation response to water availability could help mitigate the potential adverse effects of climate change on global dryland ecosystems. In the Sahel-Sudan region, spatio-temporal changes and drivers of the vegetation-water response remain unclear. This study employs long-term satellite water and vegetation products as proxies of water availability and vegetation productivity to analyze changes in vegetation-water sensitivity and the cumulative effect duration (CED) representing a measure of the legacy effect of the impact of water constraints on vegetation. A random forest model was subsequently used to analyze potential climatic drivers of the observed vegetation response. New hydrological insights for the region: ) in the sensitivity of vegetation productivity to water constraints in 26% of the Sahel-Sudan region, while 9% of the area showed a significantly increased sensitivity, mainly in the sub-humid zone. We further showed that CED significantly increased and decreased, respectively in around 9% of the study area in both cases. Our climatic driver attribution analysis suggested the existence of varying underlying mechanisms governing vegetation productivity in response to water deficit across the Sahel-Sudan dryland ecosystems. Our findings emphasize the need for diverse strategies in sustainable ecosystem management to effectively address these varying mechanisms.