An Assessment of Vegetation Cover Changes across Northern Nigeria Using Trend Line and Principal Component Analysis
U. Usman, S. A. Yelwa, S. U. Gulumbe
Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, 1(1), pp. 01-18.

Abstract
This study is on the application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and trend line using time-series satellite dataset from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (AQUA/MODIS) with the objective of characterizing vegetation cover changes across Northern Nigeria from 1981 to 2010. The dataset were both radiometically and atmospherically processed and projected on a 0.05 degree climate modelling Grid (CMD). The dataset was analysed using principal component analysis utilising the standardised principal components (SPC) and trendlines. The results from the analysis indicated that there are both negative and positive long term trends in vegetation cover changes. However, there was more greening trend of vegetation in northern part of the study area which explained 74% and 82% of the total variance in the first PCs for the NOAA-AVHRR and MODIS, dataset respectively. However, the second PC’s indicated the seasonal variation of vegetation NDVI, explaining only 4.2% and 4.8% of the total variance of the AVHRR and Aqua/MODIS-NDVI datasets respectively.

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Usman, U., Yelwa, A. S., & Gulumbe, U. S. (2012). An Assessment of Vegetation Cover Changes across Northern Nigeria Using Trend Line and Principal Component Analysis. Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, 1(1), pp. 01-18.

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U. Usman
Department of Mathematics
Usmanu Danfodiyo University
PMB 2346 Sokoto, Nigeria

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF SADIQ YELWA
Sadiq Yelwa is an Associate professor of Environmental Management in the department of Environmental Sciences at Federal University Dutse in Jigawa State Nigeria. His career spans in Cartography, Geography and Environmental Sciences. At the University College Swansea, Wales, he earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Topographic Science and later a combined honours degree in Geography and Cartography from Oxford Brookes University and later pursued postgraduate studies in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as Leicester University. Sadiq returned back to Nigeria to work as a Lecturer in the department of Geography and also held the posts of Deputy Director and later Director Academic Planning at Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto.

In 1999 Dr. Yelwa returned to the school Biological Sciences at the University of Stirling in Scotland to pursue a Ph.D. in environmental science, which he completed in 2003. His research interests lie in the environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, and include applied biogeography and desertification. He is a member of the Association of Nigerian Geographers, Nigerian Cartographic Association, African Association of Remote Sensing of the Environment, and an associate member of the American Association of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. After completing his PhD programme at the University of Stirling in the UK he returned to Nigeria and lectured at both Usmanu Danfodiyo and Umaru Musa Yar'Adua Universities in Sokoto and Katisna respectively. He later moved to the Federal University Dutse in Northwest Nigeria where he is currently the head of environmental sciences department. He is now trying to coordinate a research working group with the aim of studying flood related issues as well as desertification monitoring in the semi-arid areas of northwestern Nigeria. He has published many articles in vegetation changes and a book titled "Broad scale vegetation change assessment from coarse spatial and high temporal resolution AVHRR data" published by Cuvillier Velag, Gottingen in Germany.

S. U. Gulumbe
Department of Mathematics
Usmanu Danfodiyo University
PMB 2346 Sokoto, Nigeria