Satellite Observed Positive Impacts of Fog on Vegetation Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • AbstractFog is an important water source for many ecosystems, especially in drylands. Most fogvegetation studies focus on individual plant scale; the relationship between fog and vegetation function at larger spatial scales remains unclear. This hinders an accurate prediction of climate change impacts on dryland ecosystems. To this end, we examined the effect of fog on vegetation utilizing both optical and microwave remote sensingderived vegetation proxies and fog observations from two locations at Gobabeb and Marble Koppie within the fogdominated zone of the Namib Desert. Significantly positive relationships were found between fog and vegetation attributes from optical data at both locations. The positive relationship was also observed for microwave data at Gobabeb. Fog can explain about 10%30% of variability in vegetation proxies. These findings suggested that fog impacts on vegetation can be quantitatively evaluated from space using remote sensing data, opening a new window for research on fogvegetation interactions.

published proceedings

  • GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS

altmetric score

  • 107.4

author list (cited authors)

  • Qiao, N. a., Zhang, L., Huang, C., Jiao, W., Maggs-Kolling, G., Marais, E., & Wang, L.

citation count

  • 12

complete list of authors

  • Qiao, Na||Zhang, Lifu||Huang, Changping||Jiao, Wenzhe||Maggs-Kolling, Gillian||Marais, Eugene||Wang, Lixin

publication date

  • June 2020