Abstract:

 Based on the Landsat5 satellite data in 1992, 2003 and 2007 as well as temperature and precipitation data from the 13 weather stations in the mid-west of DPR Korea during 1992-2007, the variation characteristics of fractional vegetation (FV) in spring and their relationships with climate abnormality were investigated. The results show that the regionally averaged FV in the studied area increases significantly with a rate of about 17.5%. More specifically, the increasing magnitude of FV in plain area is about 20.0% higher than that in mountain area. In addition, FV has a negative correlation with the spring mean surface temperature (correlation coefficient: r = -0.43) and a positive correlation with the spring precipitation (r = 0.43). Moreover, there is a negative and positive correlation between the variations of the spring mean temperature, precipitation and FV (correlation coefficient: r = -0.53 and r = 0.79), respectively, with a very significant level (p<0.05). So, the variation of spring FV in the mid-west of DPR Korea may be mainly affected by spring mean temperature and precipitation.

Key words: Landsat5 TM, Remote sensing, GIS, Fractional Vegetation, Temperature, Precipitation, correlation analysis