Investigation of Vegetation Cover Change in Sudan by Using Modis Data

Abstract

The aim of this research paper is to investigate the land cover changes in Sudan during the period 2001-2013 by using the MODIS data and to identify climatic factors influencing the land cover. SPSS v 17 software was used to investigate the correlation of climatic factors with vegetation cover; also ArcGIS v 10.2 software was used to analyze the NDVI data. The results indicate that the monthly average time scale, NDVI value curve distribution during the year, July to October as the center to both sides of decreasing vegetation cover in other months. In the spatial distribution of mean NDVI in Sudan, a high value was found in the southern part. On the other hand, a low value of vegetation cover was found in northern part. NDVI spaces mean presenting features values: autumn followed by summer then winter. By calculation of average annual and seasonal-NDVI values, it was deduced that the main vegetation cover type was increasing in winter and summer seasons at the rates of 0.014/10a and 0.008/10a, respectively. While winter-NDVI was decreasing the rate of 0.001/10a and 0.026/10a in autumn and on the annual scale, respectively. Annual NDVI showed a significant degradation (area = 12705.7 km 2 , 0.5% of total area) in the middle and eastern parts and significant improvement (area = 22485.4 km 2 , 0.9 % of the total area) in the southern part of the country due to the increase in precipitation and decrease in temperature. Mean summer and autumn-NDVI showed a significant difference 0.01% significance level with mean summer and autumn precipitation (correlation coefficients = 0.955 and 0.953, respectively). While there was a significantly negative relationship between mean summer and autumn-NDVI with mean summer and autumn temperature at 0.01% significance level (correlation coefficients = − 0.270 and − 0.820, respectively).