Vegetation response to upstream water yield in the Heihe River by time series analysis of MODIS data

Liquid and solid precipitation is abundant in the high elevation, upper reach of the Heihe basin. The development of modern irrigation schemes in the middle reach of the basin is taking up an increasing share of fresh water resources, endangering the oasis and traditional irrigation systems in the lower reach. In this study, the response of vegetation in the Ejina Oasis in the lower reach of the Heihe River to the water yield of the upper catchment was analyzed by time series analysis of monthly observations of precipitation in the upper and lower catchment, river streamflow downstream of the modern irrigation schemes and satellite observations of vegetation index. Firstly, remote sensing data were used to monitor the vegetation dynamic for a long time period. Due to cloud-contamination, atmospheric influence and different solar angles, however, the quality and consistence of time series of remote sensing data is degraded. In this research we used a Fourier Transform method – the Harmonic Analysis of Time Series (HANTS) algorithm – to reconstruct cloud-free NDVI time series data from the Terra-MODIS dataset. Anomalies in precipitation, streamflow, and vegetation index are detected by comparing each year with the average year. The relationship between the anomalies in vegetation growth, the local precipitation and upstream water yield were analyzed. The same approach is used to identify, remove and gap-filling cloud contaminated observations in the satellite data for each year in the dataset. The results showed that: the previous year total runoff had a significant relationship with the vegetation growth in Ejina Oasis and that anomalies in monthly runoff of the Heihe River influenced the phenology of vegetation in the entire oasis during drier years. The time of maximum green-up was uniform throughout the oasis during wetter years, but showed a clear S–N gradient (downstream) during drier years.
Remote Sensing
Aerospace Engineering