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Satellite-based assessment of large-scale land cover change in Asian arid regions in the period of 2001–2009

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Abstract

Arid regions in Asia are commonly characterized by rapidly growing populations with limited land resources and varying rainfall frequencies under climatic change. Despite being one of the most important environmental challenges in Asia, the changing aridity in this region, particularly due to large-scale land cover change, has not been well documented. In this study, we used rainfall data and a new land heterogeneity index to identify recent trend in land cover changes in the Asian arid regions. The result indicates a significant decreasing trend of barren lands and an increasing trend of vegetated lands. Although the potential land cover change is commonly believed to be strongly sensitive to rainfall change, such sensitivity has not been observed during the nine-year period (2001–2009) analyzed. Through the analyses of two separate periods (2001–2005 and 2005–2009), the sensitivity of rainfall to land cover change in arid regions is found to be dependent on the initial spatial heterogeneity of vegetated land cover. The approach used and the findings in this study represent an important step toward better understanding of large-scale land cover change in the Asian arid regions, and have the potential to predict future land cover change under various climate change scenarios.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank to editor and anonymous reviewers, whose comments were valuable for revising this manuscript. This study was partially supported by “Long-term Vision for the Sustainable Use of the World’s Freshwater Resources” program through Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) under the Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan, and the Korea Meteorological Administration Research and Development Program under Grand CATER 2012-2066, Korea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Spatial Information Engineering, Pukyong National University, 45 Yongso Road, Nam-Gu, Busan, 608-737, Republic of Korea

    Jaeil Cho, Yang-Won Lee & Kyung-Soo Han

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, 21 Lower Kent Ridge Road, Singapore, 119077, Singapore

    Pat J.-F. Yeh

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Shinjiro Kanae

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  1. Jaeil Cho
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  2. Yang-Won Lee
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  3. Pat J.-F. Yeh
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  5. Shinjiro Kanae
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Correspondence to Jaeil Cho.

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Cho, J., Lee, YW., Yeh, P.JF. et al. Satellite-based assessment of large-scale land cover change in Asian arid regions in the period of 2001–2009. Environ Earth Sci 71, 3935–3944 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2778-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-013-2778-0

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