0000000000302307
AUTHOR
Adeline Fayolle
Cycles diurnes de rayonnement solaire et forets en Afrique Centrale.
The sunlightconditions prevailing in Central Africa, and their potential impact on forests traits and functioning, have neverbeen fully explored. Using satellite estimates documenting mostly the period 2005-2013, and accounting forscale interactions between the diurnal and annual cycles, we demonstrate that the seasonality of sunlight levelsstrongly vary across Central Africa forests. Gabon stands out with a main dry season strongly light-deficient,cool and moist. An original map of terra firme forest types developed by CIRAD shows that most of theevergreen forests of Central Africa develop in Gabon. We postulate that despite a mean annual precipitationamount below 2000 mm/yr, the Gabonese …
Vegetation structure and greenness in Central Africa from Modis multi-temporal data.
African forests within the Congo Basin are generally mapped at regional scale as broad-leaved evergreen forests, with a main distinction between terra-firme and swamp forests types. At the same time, commercial forest inventories, as well as national maps, have highlighted a strong spatial heterogeneity of forest types. A detailed vegetation map generated using consistent methods is needed to inform decision makers about spatial forest organisation and theirs relationships with environmental drivers in the context of global change. We propose a multi-temporal remotely sensed data approach to characterize vegetation types using vegetation index annual profiles. The classifications identified…