Find and analyse location where we see collapse

[nbarlowATI]

Look for patterned vegetation transitioning to bare soil.

[samvanstroud]

Could think about a large search over climate conditions to find locations which are likely to have a collapse. If the direct NDVI results look sensible (#212), we wouldn't necessarily even need to use patterened vegetation to show a collapse (?)

[samvanstroud]

I'm going to run a grid search on coordinates around the southern side of the Sahara

[samvanstroud]

Some manual analysis on ~80 locations failed to find a suitable spot, the general trend is no macroscopic decrease in rainfall in the period 2015-2020. I didn't manage to find anywhere that had a vegetation collapse in this period

• Can look further back in time and rely on landsat data
• Can Use a finer spatial resolution for the grid search
• Should automate the analysis
  • looking for decrease in precipitation? or vegetation?

[samvanstroud]

Maybe creating some server side maps can help us #256

[samvanstroud]

One thing worth keeping in mind after looking at the images from the initial grid search, is that a single short term period of drought is unlikely to cause ecosystem collapse. Every year there is a dry period with ~0mm precipitation, so the plants have evolved to deal with this (I guess they leave seeds that can survive completely drying out and get reactivated whever the water comes back). As an example, see this location, where transitions between these two vegetation extremes happen almost every year.

[samvanstroud]

I think a good bet for finding an example of collapse could be to look in areas known to have had a drying trend over the past decade. Perhaps there is some literature on droughts that we can use.

[samvanstroud]

Superseded by #256