The Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 has led to huge damage to land surface vegetation in northwest Sichuan, one of the typical ecological fragile regions in China. In this paper, the vegetation degradation by the earthquake and its recovery after the disaster are evaluated from analysis of...

The 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 damaged the ecology of northwestern Sichuan, China. This study assessed ecological changes within a few years of the earthquake through satellite observations of vegetation dynamics in the earthquake area. As an ecological indicator, the fractional...