Mapping impacts of human activities from nighttime light on vegetation cover changes in southeast Asia

Abstract

It is commonly believed that the impacts of human activities have decreased the natural vegetation cover, while some promotion of the vegetation growth has also been found. In this study, negative or positive correlations between human impacts and vegetation cover were tested in the Southeast Asia (SEA) region during 2012–2018. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite— Day/Night Band (VIIRS/DNB) nocturnal data were used as a measure of human activities and the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS)/normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) diurnal data were used as a measure of vegetation cover. The temporal segmentation method was introduced to calculate features of two sets of time series with spatial resolution of about 500 m, including the overall trend, maximum trend, start date, and change duration. The regions with large variation in human activities (V‐change region) were first extracted by the Gaussian fitted method, and 8.64% of the entire SEA (VIIRS overall trend 0.4) was set as the target analysis area. According to statistics, the average overall VIIRS trend for the V‐change region in SEA was about 2.12, with a slight NDVI increment. The time lag effect was also found between vegetation cover and human impacts change, with an average of 10.26 months. Our results indicated a slight green overall trend in the SEA region over the most recent 7 years. The spatial pattern of our trend analysis results can be useful for vegetation management and regional planning.