Remotely-sensed vegetation greening along a restoration gradient of a tropical forest, Kibale National Park, Uganda
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Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Land Degradation & Development
Abstract
Restoration has now emerged as a global priority, with international initiatives such as the “UN
Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030)”. To fulfil the large-scale global restoration
ambitions, an essential step is the monitoring of vegetation recovery after restoration interventions.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of remotely-sensed vegetation indices, Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), to monitor the
progress of forest regeneration across a tropical forest restoration project area in Kibale National
Park, Uganda. Using the chronosequence approach, results indicated non-linear patterns in NDVI
and EVI across the first 25 years of recovery. Both NDVI and EVI increased for the first 10 years of
forest regeneration. This “greening” phase could be used as the indicator of successful onset of
forest recovery. In particular, the decline of elephant grass, and the consequent arrival of shrubs and
trees, can be detected as an increase in NDVI. Primary forests differed from the 25-year-old
regenerating forests based on the unique combination of low mean and low seasonal variation in
EVI. Our results, therefore, suggest that the long-term success of forest restoration could be
monitored by evaluating how closely the combination of mean, and degree of seasonal variation in
EVI, resembles that observed in the primary forest.
Description
Keywords
Africa, EVI, NDVI, Restoration, Tropical forest, Vegetation index
Citation
Valtonen, A., Korkiatupa, E., Holm, S., Malinga, G. M., & Nakadai, R. (2021). Remotely sensed vegetation greening along a restoration gradient of a tropical forest, Kibale National Park, Uganda. Land Degradation & Development, 32(18), 5166-5177. doi: 10.1002/ldr.4096