Publications by authors named "Peter Waylen"
Article Synopsis
- Understanding the drivers of vegetation change is essential for managing landscapes and predicting climate impacts on regional vegetation patterns, especially in southern African savannas.
- The study focused on vegetation cover changes from 2001-2010 across the Kwando, Okavango, and Zambezi catchments in southern Africa, using advanced analysis techniques to model biophysical and social factors influencing vegetation dynamics.
- Findings highlighted key influences on vegetation biomass, including protected areas, elevation, soil type, and human factors like population density and infrastructure, providing insights for better landscape management and conservation efforts.
Background: Understanding the drivers of large-scale vegetation change is critical to managing landscapes and key to predicting how projected climate and land use changes will affect regional vegetation patterns. This study aimed to improve our understanding of the role, magnitude and spatial distribution of the key environmental factors driving vegetation change in southern African savanna, and how they vary across physiographic gradients.
Methodology/principal Findings: We applied Dynamic Factor Analysis (DFA), a multivariate times series dimension reduction technique to ten years of monthly remote sensing data (MODIS-derived normalized difference vegetation index, NDVI) and a suite of environmental covariates: precipitation, mean and maximum temperature, soil moisture, relative humidity, fire and potential evapotranspiration.