Vegetation Monitoring in Southern Africa: A Consideration of Natural and Anthropogenic Factors

摘要

Initial findings of an ongoing project to investigate vegetation change in Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa are presented. It has been hypothesised that environmental management practices in KNP over the last century have led to structural homogenisation of the park's vegetation. As a first step towards resolving this, changes in vegetation abundance, a key factor in determining homogeneity, were investigated. An extensive archive of remotely sensed imagery, acquired between 1972 and 2002, were analysed. Normalised difference vegetation indices were generated and the resulting images were compared with various environmental parameters, including the distribution of water resources and animal populations within KNP. Certain difficulties prevented a straightforward investigation of vegetation dynamics, including seasonal effects and wildfires.