Publications

Behroozeh, S; Khoorani, A; Damaneh, HE; Arsanjani, JJ (2025). Monitoring vegetation dynamics across land use types in Iran: spatiotemporal relationships with soil temperature and water volume. EARTH SCIENCE INFORMATICS, 18(2), 261.

Abstract
Soil Temperature (ST) and Soil Water Volume (SWV) are the key physical factors for detecting vegetation condition in different land uses. The present study investigates spatiotemporal changes and relations of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) with ST and SWV over Iran from 2001 to 2022 using MODIS data and Hurst exponent and correlation coefficient. The results reveal that NDVI generally shows a positive trend that in February and March is significant (in 95% of significance level) in the southeast and west of the country. Soil temperature (ST) showed significant positive trends primarily from May to September in the western and northwestern regions, while soil water volume (SWV) exhibited positive trends mainly in July, October, and November in the southern regions and limited areas in the center of the country. NDVI exhibits a strong correlation with ST from January to March and with SWV throughout the year, particularly in June. Approximately, 27.27% of the area of the country was under degradation, and improvement was recorded in 61.53%. Consistent and significant improvement was observed in some regions of the southeast, west, north and northwest and degradation was mainly distributed in some regions of the center and east of the country. Improvement ratio for different land uses including Barren lands, open shrublands, forest, agricultural and grasslands was 58.46, 66.96, 61.68, 69.43 and 74.29% respectively. The findings of this research can assist policymakers and natural resource managers in developing more effective programs for vegetation management and combating land degradation.

DOI:
10.1007/s12145-024-01645-4

ISSN:
1865-0481