Woody Plant Encroachment in Semi-arid Madrean Grasslands of Southeastern Arizona
Keywords:
Chihuahuan Desert, Madrean, Prosopis, Semi-arid grassland, Woody plant encroachmentAbstract
Semi-arid grasslands within the Madrean Archipelago of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert have been experiencing woody plant encroachment, leading to diminished species richness and ecosystem services. In order to better understand the dynamics of woody encroachment, we used the Landsat Thematic Mapper record from 1984 to 2008 to map changes in woody plant cover and identify spatial patterns and temporal trends. We used spectral mixture analysis to quantify the percent of woody plant cover in each pixel and a robust trend analysis to track per-pixel changes over the twenty-five year time series to generate the amount of change, rate of change, and change relative to initial cover. We observed an overall trend of increasing woody cover with a mean increase of 5 percent and substantial spatial variability in expansion amounts, with most values ranging between -2-11 percent. The mean rate of change across the region was 0.2 percent increase per year and the mean relative increase was 92 percent, meaning woody cover nearly doubled in the region over twenty-five years. Given current rates of increase, the region will likely reach the projected maximum woody plant cover of 35 percent to 45 percent between the years 2128 and 2178.References
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