Land-Cover Phenologies and Their Relation to Climatic Variables in an Anthropogenically Impacted Mediterranean Coastal Area

Abstract

Mediterranean coastal areas are experiencing rapid land cover change caused by human-induced land degradation and extreme climatic events. Vegetation index time series provide a useful way to monitor vegetation phenological variations. This study quantitatively describes Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) temporal changes for Mediterranean land-covers from the perspective of vegetation phenology and its relation with climate. A time series from 2001 to 2007 of the MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Index 16-day composite (MOD13Q1) was analyzed to extract anomalies (by calculating z-scores) and frequency domain components (by the Fourier Transform). Vegetation phenology analyses were developed for diverse land-covers for an area in south Alicante (Spain) providing a useful way to analyze and understand the phenology associated to those land-covers. Time series of climatic variables were also analyzed through anomaly detection techniques and the Fourier Transform. Correlations between EVI time series and climatic variables were computed. Temperature, rainfall and radiation were significantly correlated with almost all land-cover classes for the harmonic analysis amplitude term. However, vegetation phenology was not correlated with climatic variables for the harmonic analysis phase term suggesting a delay between climatic variations and vegetation response.