The Relationship between Vegetation and Rainfall in Central Sudan

Abstract

Daily dynamic vegetation cover mapping at the global scale is the most important parameter to retrieve from coarse-spatial resolution global land surface optical satellite remote sensing to understand the climate change impact on the rainfall cycle and its variability in time. The objective of this research was the investigation of the change in vegetation cover dynamic in time and its relationship with rainfall in Central regions of Sudan for a decade (2000- 2010). To achieve our objective, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time series obtained from SPOT-VGT sensor, precipitation data measured over the study area by different weather stations, GIS and statistical analysis were used. The obtained results show significant level of agreement between NDVI and rainfall values during the study period (0.6 ≤ R2 ≤ 0.8). Certainly, such derived results could be useful as imputing in the carbon cycle models and/or climate impact modeling, as well the development of new policy for climate change adaptation.