To Understand the Response of Vegetation Greenness to Recent Climatic Change in Sikkim Himalaya

Ramteke, Tushar (2017) To Understand the Response of Vegetation Greenness to Recent Climatic Change in Sikkim Himalaya. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Tushar Ramteke (10MS96)) MS_Thesis_Report_Tushar_10MS96.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (1MB)

Abstract

Normalized Difference Vegetation Index is considered as one of the reliable indicator in order to visualize the terrestrial green vegetation cover. Vegetation health is directly influenced by several climatic and non-climatic factors, but precipitation and temperature play a major role. Carrying out a temporal study for the changes in vegetation greenness in the state of Sikkim, taking into account major climatic factors may reveal how the vegetation have changed in terms of its health and how much the vegetation depends on these factors. In this study, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI data, derived from NASA’s Earth Observatory was used in order to document if there is any statistically significant greening of vegetation in the whole geographical region of the state of Sikkim. The seasonal variations and trends in average monthly NDVI were observed through time series analysis for the period 2001- 2015 using simple linear regression and then the Sen Slope fitting with 95% confidence interval (p < 0.05). Apart from that, this study also documents the contribution of climate in greening taking into account two major factors that could have supposedly affected the observed NDVI and hence the vegetation greenness: Average Monthly Temperature and Average Monthly Precipitation. Regression analysis was also carried out between the two climatic factors and NDVI to look for dependence of NDVI on these factors. Results revealed small but statistically significant overall greening of vegetation in Sikkim during the period of study. This study also revealed a synergistic relationship between seasonal variations in NDVI and climatic factors and a tradeoff relationship between the two, when the trends are compared. Also, the protected zones were found to be quite efficient in terms of maintaining greenness of the vegetation than the nonprotected ones.

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