Please specify your plan to change the vegetation change using remote sensing. One can only detect change in vegetation and monitor it but cannot bring change in it using remote sensing. For this one has to come from space to the ground. So far my information is correct, climate change to a great extent has arrested desertification of Sub-Saharan Africa.

It was a mistake, i wanted to say " check"

Indeed many parameters must be taken into account for defining the best data and methods for accurately measuring teh vegetation changes. Look at the book chapter I wrote in 2008 with the aspects to take into account

Remote Sensing of Land-Cover and Land-Use Dynamics

Philippe Mayaux, Hugh Eva, Andreas Brink, frederic achard, Alan Belward

01/2008; ISBN: 978-1402063572 In book: Earth Observation of Global Change, Chapter: Remote Sensing of Land-Cover and Land-Use Dynamics, Editors: springer

Attached is a list of references of land-cover change studies in humid and dry ecosystems. But please don't do the error I've seen in some studies: a simple difference between land-cover maps. When you know the inherent errors of such maps (I produced the GLC 2000 for Africa), a combination of such maps must be prohibited.

Good luck

Hi Philippe, could you pls repost the attached document as I have been unable to open it. Thanks

Here are the references in plain text

A few references of land-cover changes studies in Africa

Humid ecosystems

Achard, F., Eva, H., Stibig, H.-J., Mayaux, P., Gallego, J., Richards, T., Malingreau, J.-P. 2002. Determination of deforestation rates of the world's humid tropical forests. Science 297, 999-1002.

Brink, A., & Eva, H.D. 2009. Monitoring 25 years of land cover change dynamics in Africa: A sample based remote sensing approach. Applied Geography 29, 501–512.

Duveiller, G., Defourny, P., Desclée, B., Mayaux, P. 2008. Deforestation in Central Africa - Estimates at regional national and landscape levels by advanced processing of systematically distributed Landsat extracts. Remote Sensing of Environment 112, 1969–1981.

Mayaux, P., Holmgren, P., Achard, F., Eva, H., Stibig, H.-J., Branthomme, A. 2005. Tropical forest cover change in the 1990s and options for future monitoring. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 360, 373–384.

Desclée, B., Simonetti, D., Mayaux, P., Achard, F. Combining multi-sensor medium resolution satellite imagery for forest cover change assessment in Central Africa (2012) European Space Agency, (Special Publication) ESA SP, 707 SP, .

Potapov, P.V., Turubanova, S.A., Hansen, M.C., Adusei, B., Broich, M., Altstatt, A., Mane, L., Justice, C.O. Quantifying forest cover loss in Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2000-2010, with Landsat ETM+ data (2012) Remote Sensing of Environment, 122, pp. 106-116.

Dry ecosystems

C. Bodart*, A. B. Brink, F. Donnay, A. Lupi, P. Mayaux and F. Achard, 2013, Continental estimates of forest cover and forest cover changes in the dry ecosystems of Africa –between 1990 and 2000, Journal of Biogeography, in press

Herrmann, S.M., Anyamba, A., Tucker, C.J., 2005. Recent trends in vegetation dynamics in the African Sahel and their relationship to climate. Global Environmental Change Part A 15, 394–404.

Olsson, L., Eklundh, L., Ardö, J., 2005. A recent greening of the Sahel—trends, patterns and potential causes. Journal of Arid Environments 63, 556–566.

Tappan, G.., Sall, M., Wood, E.., Cushing, M., 2004. Ecoregions and land cover trends in Senegal. Journal of Arid Environments 59, 427–462.

Tappan, G., McGahuey, M., 2007. Tracking environmental dynamics and agricultural intensification in southern Mali. Agricultural Systems 94, 38–51.

Thank you

Thank to you all.

You may use AVHRR data for large areas and Landsat TM for smaller regions. Vry high resolution satellite data ( IKONOS, etc.) would probably be too expensive to use for regional vegetation change detection. There are many good articles on this subject on the internet. Regards, Vic Klemas

Don't forget these great 1990s publications!

Tucker, C. J., Dregne, H. E. & Newcomb, W. W. 1991. Expansion and Contraction of the Sahara Desert from 1980 to 1990. Science, 253, 299-301.

Tucker, C. J. & Nicholson, S. E. 1999. Variations in the Size of the Sahara Desert from 1980 to 1997. Ambio, 28, 587-591.

And a few more recent ones:

Piao, S., Fang, J., Liu, H. & Zhu, B. 2005. NDVI-indicated decline in desertification in China in the past two decades. Geophysical Research Letters, 32.

Jeong, S.-J., Ho, C.-H., Brown, M. E., Kug, J.-S. & Piao, S. 2010. Browning in desert boundaries in Asia in recent decades. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, 116, D02103.

All of these look at changes in deserts as a time series analysis problem, not a land cover change problem. These two different methods get at different kinds of change so you'd need to define what you are trying to do a bit more clearly!

There are some useful books and articles on this topic :

Anyamba, A., Tucker, C.J. (2005) Analysis of Sahelian vegetation dynamics using NOAA-AVHRR NDVI data from 1981-2003. Journal of Arid Environments 63, 596-614.

Purkis, S. and Klemas, V. (2011). Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, U.K. 384 pp.

Mayaux, P., Eva, H., Brink, A., Achard, F., Belwar, A. (2008) Remote sensing of land- cover and land-use dynamics. In Chuvieco, E. (Editor): Earth Observation of Global Change. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.

u can down load Landsat data for a year and check the variations by generating NDVI or u can download NDVI product of MODIS; which provide the vegetation change of region according phenology.

Experimental evaluation of Sentinel-2 spectral response functions for NDVI time-series continuity

Authors: P. D'Odorico, A. Gonsamo, A. Damm, M.E. Schaepman

NDVI and SAVI would be effective, See the following article:

Klemas, V. (2013). Remote sensing of wetland biomass: An overview. Journal of Coastal Research, in press.

Klemas,V. (2011) Remote sensing of wetlands: Case studies comparing practical techniques. Journal of Coastal Research, 27, 418-427.

you can use AVHRR and MODIS datasets for vegetation change for low resolution.

for a high resolution you can switch to Landsat or Sentinel satellite images. You may also use various vegetation indices like NDVI, SAVI, EVI etc.

see the article below-

Article LU/LC Change Detection and Forest Degradation Analysis in Da...