Assessing climatic, edaphic, vegetation cover data, and their trends around cities located in desert environments using online remote sensing

Air, water, soil, and plant resources have been endangered by human activities in recent years. The aim is to study the trend of changes in these resources using remote sensing data over the last 20 years. The study area of Yazd province (including 24 cities) is in the desert area in the center of Iran. Data were extracted from remote sensing products with web-based software Giovanni NASA and Google Earth Engine platform in the form of time series maps and graphs. The results showed there are two groups, increased and decreased variables. Increased variables were the vegetation density soil temperature, soil organic carbon, black carbon, and evapotranspiration. Decreased variables were wind speed, carbon monoxide, dust, soil moisture, and land surface temperature. Comparing these three categories of climatic, edaphic, and plant factors showed plant and climatic factors had a good trend. Edaphic factors only 50% of them had a good trend. In climatic factors, evapotranspiration had an unfavorable trend, but temperature and wind speed had a good trend. We found good trends; for example, enhanced vegetation index (EVI) had 42%, increasing relative minimum and land surface temperature (LST) had about 46% decreasing relative maximum in the desert region in urban areas. The policy of conservation of plant environmental resources in the desert region was caused by increasing vegetation cover density and decreasing dust, wind speed, and air temperature. Good and bad trends were observed in regions with more nighttime light in cities. This method provides a quick review of many various resources in early warning to governments and decision-makers in the region.