Spatial patterns of NDVI variation over Indonesia and their relationship to ENSO warm events during the period 1982-2006

Abstract

The present study is based on the assumption that vegetation in Indonesia is significantly affected by climate anomalies that are related to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) warm phases (El Nino) during the past decades. The analysis builds upon a monthly time series from the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) gridded data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and two ENSO proxies, namely, sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTa) and Southern Oscillation index (SOI), and aims at the analysis of the spatially explicit dimension of ENSO impact on vegetation on the Indonesian archipelago. A time series correlation analysis between NDVI anomalies and ENSO proxies for the most recent ENSO warm events (1982-2006) showed that, in general, anomalies in vegetation productivity over Indonesia can be related to an anomalous increase of SST in the eastern equatorial Pacific and to decreases in SOI, respectively. The net effect of these variations is a significant decrease in NDVI values throughout the affected areas during the ENSO warm phases. The 1982/83 ENSO warm episode was rather short but-in terms of ENSO indices-the most extreme one within the study period. The 1997/98 El Nino lasted longer but was weaker. Both events had significant impact on vegetation in terms of negative NDVI anomalies. Compared to these two major warm events, the other investigated events (1987/88, 1991/92, 1994/95, and 2002/03) had no significant effect on vegetation in the investigated region. The land cover-type specific sensitivity of vegetation to ENSO anomalies revealed thresholds of vegetation response to ENSO warm events. The results for the 1997/98 ENSO warm event confirm the hypothesis that the vulnerability of vegetated tropical land surfaces to drought conditions is considerably affected by land use intensity. In particular, it could be shown that natural forest areas are more resistant to drought stress than degraded forest areas or cropland. Comparing the spatially explicit patterns of El Nino-related vegetation variation during the major El Nino phases, the spatial distribution of affected areas reveals distinct core regions of ENSO drought impact on vegetation for Indonesia that coincide with forest conversion and agricultural intensification hot spots.