- Summary
- Objectives
- Status
- Project Publications
The Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), the first biosphere reserve to be established in India is noted for its rich biodiversity. NBR covers an area of 5500 km2 and shows a large gradient in rainfall, temperature, and elevation, which have given rise to diverse vegetation types. The climatic and vegetation gradients within the NBR makes it an ideal site to understand the historical trends in ecosystem services and their response to changing climatic conditions. In this project we examined the long‐term trends and variability in climatic factors and its impacts on ecosystem services using gridded and remotely sensed data products.
1. Assess climate variability and trends and impacts on ecosystem services in the Nilgiris landscape.
2. Assess land-cover change and impacts on ecosystem services in the Nilgiris.
3. Use existing and accessible remotely sensed and climate data to map hotspots of ongoing phenological change in forests and grasslands in the Nilgiri landscape.
4. Interpret impacts of these changes on ecosystem services and implications under future climate change.
- Analysis of coarse scale historical gridded data showed that the average rainfall across the study area during the South West Monsoon has significantly declined with corresponding reduction in the number of rain days between 1951–2007. The trends in historical rainfall are contrary to large scale model predictions which indicate increase in rainfall totals with high levels of uncertainty.
- The entire landscape has witnessed an increase in temperature, which is in line with future climate change predictions.
- Annual net primary productivity (ANPP) indicates the amount of carbon assimilated in terrestrial biomass—84% of the NBR experienced a decrease in ANPP due to the long term influence of water stress.
- Trends in vegetation greening and browning showed a net greening in the NBR.
- Trends in hydrological services indicated an increase in water available as surface flows and groundwater upto 2015–2016 and a decrease thereafter.
- LULC changes, regional climatic variable and other non‐climatic factors had greater influence on carbon sequestration compared to phenology and hydrological services. These results can feed into conservation planning, developing regional climate resilience plans, and also aid in our understanding of regional to global scale vegetation dynamics, which are required to improve models of climate biosphere interactions.