Sensitivity of rainfall on land cover change over South East Asia: Some observational results Original Research Article

Global vegetation cover is strongly related to the climatic conditions. Based on the rainfall forecast the productivity of the crops and also the drought conditions are being monitored on routine basis. Since past several decades efforts have been made to understand the role of tropical forcing in the maintenance of general circulation in the atmosphere. It has been found that the low latitude condensation process and lateral coupling with the higher latitude energy is the most important driving force in the tropics. In the present paper, we have studied the variability of rainfall and vegetation in the South East Asian (SEA) region. Nineteen years (January 1982–December 2000) of vegetation and rainfall data have been analyzed for different land cover of SEA and it has been found that the cultivated land controls the variability of rainfall in this region.