Our paper about ecosystem dynamics in northwestern Ethiopia was published in Applied Geography (Q1 journal with a 5-year Impact Factor of 3.162) in February 2017. In this very much remote sensing piece we used a nice quantitative method for monitoring NDVI and climate variables. The aim was to assess long-term trends in dryland vegetation variability. Even though this topic has been largely treated in the scientific literature our innovative approach was to assess such dynamics in a spatiotemporal manner, focusing on “breakpoints” to disentangle general trends from abrupt changes. Using this approach is possible to identify non-environmental driving factors, such as overgrazing. We develop the analysis over a bundle of MODIS images and the R (c) package. Here is the link to the full article:

Zewdie W., Csaplovics E. & Inostroza L., 2017. Monitoring ecosystem dynamics in northwestern Ethiopia using NDVI and climate variables to assess long term trends in dryland vegetation variability. Applied Geography, Volume 79, February 2017, Pp 167–178. DOI 10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.12.019

If you want to have the full manuscript just send me an email and I will be happy to share it with you.

Enjoy!