Global vegetation biomass change (1988-2008) and attribution to environmental and human drivers

Aim Vegetation optical depth (VOD) is an indicator of the water content of both woody and leaf components in terrestrial aboveground vegetation biomass that can be derived from passive microwave remote sensing. VOD is distinct from optical vegetation remote sensing data such as the normalized difference vegetation index in that it is: (a) less prone to saturation in dense canopies; (b) sensitive to both photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic biomass; and (c) less affected by atmospheric conditions. Our primary objective was to analyse a recently developed longterm VOD record and investigate how the vegetation water content of various land-cover types responded to environmental changes and human influences from 1988 to 2008. Location Global. Methods We first conducted Mann‐Kendall trend tests on annual average VOD to identify regions with significant changes over the period 1988‐2008.To diagnose the underlying cause of the observed changes, patterns for these identified regions were further compared with independent datasets of precipitation, crop production, deforestation and fire occurrence.