ABSTRACT
Understanding how vegetation productivity responds to variations in precipitation is critical for evaluating the impacts of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems. Rain-use efficiency (RUE) is an important indicator for evaluating vegetation productivity in response to the variations in precipitation. RUE helps to understand the coupling between ecosystem carbon and water cycles. Regional RUE can be derived from the productivity and rainfall data estimated by remote sensing. This chapter introduces the concept of RUE and its environmental impacting factors, with a focus on the use of annual or seasonal summed vegetation indices (e.g., Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) as the proxy for vegetation productivity to calculate RUE. A case study of estimating RUE by SPOT Vegetation NDVI time series data in the west of Songliao Plain, China, is discussed.
