For my final MGEM research project, I examined the following question: How are greening and browning trends associated with topography in the boreal forests of the Athabasca Plains Ecoregion?
My final research document can be viewed here as a PDF
Highlights:
- Annual Landsat data used to derive yearly NDVI for each pixel throughout study area
- NDVI trend significance and direction assessed with Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope
- 42.8% of unmasked pixels exhibited a significant monotonic NDVI trend
- 86.9% of pixels with a significant NDVI trend were greening, only 13.1% were browning
- Areas with higher slope had a greater proportion of greening pixels
- Increased elevation, more southerly aspect displayed a weaker association with greening