Abstract
The vegetation in Nigeria is split into seven distinct zones which are sandwiched between the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa and the Atlantic Ocean to the south of Nigeria. The activities that promote climate change such as deforestation and greenhouse gas emission has led to land area encroachment. This study employed Sen’s innovative trend analysis (ITA) and Mann–Kendall (MK) test to investigate trends in surface temperture, photosynthethically active radiation (PAR), relative humidity, and precipitation. The data spans a period of 40 years from 1981 to 2020. Sen’s ITA evaluates the data by showing ‘low’ ‘medium’, and ‘high’ record groups. The results from MK test shows that some parameters indicated an increasing trend, while others indicated a decreasing, save for PAR which showed an insignificant trend. Sen’s ITA also identified increasing, decreasing, or no trend in parameters across the vegetation zones. It is concluded that there is an increase in parameters that may translate to a greener vegetaion across the vegetation zones. This study is very important for the identification of trend changes for vegetation parameters, indicating the possibility of desert encroachment or a change in vegetation cover. This will buttress on the importance and possibilities of regreening in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
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Data availability
The data associated with this study was obtained from the NASA POWER repository for the specific locations in study at https://power.larc.nasa.gov/data-access-viewer/.
Code availability
The code associated with this analysis can be assessed from https://github.com/Emmaestro001/Innovative-Trend-Analysis-of-Vegetation-Zones-over-Nigeria.
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EPA: conceived and designed the analysis; collected the data; analysed the data using analysis tools; performed the analysis, and wrote the first draft. UN: interpreted the results and wrote the paper. COE: reviewed results for scientific relevance, supervised the study, reviewed and wrote some sections. All authors read and commented on the previous versions of the manuscript, and unanimously approved the final manuscript.
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Agbo, E.P., Nkajoe, U., Edet, C.O. et al. Identification of trends of key parameters affecting vegetation over Nigeria’s vegetation zones using innovative trend analysis. Environ Earth Sci 82, 464 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-11141-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-023-11141-5