African dryland ecosystem changes controlled by soil water

Abstract Monitoring long‐term vegetation dynamics in African drylands is of great importance for both ecosystem degradation studies and carbon‐cycle modelling. Here, we exploited the complementary use of optical and passive microwave satellite data— normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and vegetation optical depth (VOD)—to provide new insights of ecosystem changes in African drylands. During 1993–2012, 54% of African drylands experienced a significant increase of VOD, mainly located in southern Africa and west and central Africa, with an average rate of increase of (1.2 ± 2.7) × 10 −3  yr −1 . However, a significant decreasing NDVI was observed over 43% of the African drylands, in particular in western Niger and eastern Africa, with an average browning rate of (−0.13 ± 1.5) × 10 −3  yr −1 . The contrasting vegetation trends (increasing VOD and decreasing NDVI) were largely caused by an increase in the relative proportion of the woody component of the vegetation, as a result of the prevailing woody encroachment in African drylands during the study period. Soil water emerges as the dominant driver of ecosystem changes in African drylands, in particular in arid and semiarid areas. This is evidenced by a strong spatio‐temporal correlation between soil water and vegetation, where soil water changes explain about 48% of vegetation variations. This study emphasizes the potential of utilizing multiple satellite products with different strengths in monitoring different characteristics of ecosystems to evaluate ecosystem changes and reveal the underlying mechanisms of the observed changes.