Detecting Land Degradation in Eastern China Grasslands with Time Series Segmentation and Residual Trend analysis (TSS-RESTREND) and GIMMS NDVI3g Data

Grassland ecosystems in China have experienced degradation caused by natural processes and human activities. Time series segmentation and residual trend analysis (TSS-RESTREND) was applied to grasslands in eastern China. TSS-RESTREND is an extended version of the residual trend (RESTREND) methodology. It considers breakpoint detection to identify pixels with abrupt ecosystem changes which violate the assumptions of RESTREND. With TSS-RESTREND, in Xilingol (111◦59′–120◦00′E and 42◦32′–46◦41′E) and Hulunbuir (115◦30′–122◦E and 47◦10′–51◦23′N) grassland, 5.5% and 3.3% of the area experienced a decrease in greenness between 1984 and 2009, 80.2% and 73.2% had no significant change, 4.9% and 2.6% increased in greenness, and 9.4% and 20.9% were undetermined, respectively. RESTREND may underestimate the greening trend in Xilingol, but both TSS-RESTREND and RESTREND revealed no significant differences in Hulunbuir. The proposed TSS-RESTREND methodology captured both the time and magnitude of vegetation changes.