Evaluating Vegetation Greening and Browning Across the Rio Grande Basin

This study examines vegetation dynamics in the region using MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Earth Observations, analyzing temporal changes over a 21-year period (2000-2020). As shifts in vegetation are often driven by natural hydroclimatic variability, these changes have significant implications for the broader desert ecosystem, including native species. We examine how climatic factors—particularly precipitation and temperature—influence vegetation patterns using NDVI, supported by LAI and FPAR. We utilize gridded datasets from both ground-based and satellite sources to assess spatiotemporal vegetation trends. We apply the Mann Kendall test with a pre-whitening approach to minimize the impact of serial correlation in the data.