Bioclimatic controls and feedbacks on vegetation occurrence and distribution in the Espinhaço Mountain Range (Brazil)Keyword: water use (efficiency & strategy)   Baby: Tropical mountains are fragile and cute Werewolf: Functional Conservation vs Climate ChangeSilver bullet:  remote sensing of hydrologyTODO: Hydroclimatology :Revisão BibliográficaVegetation response will be defined by a Remote Sensing indexWhich index? NDVI AVHRR GIMMS3GHow will the response be quantified? Min NDVI, Max NDVI, Annual Productivity (Efficiency), Growing Season Length (Strategy)Introduction Water availability is a main driver of terrestrial ecosystems functioning and variability. Commonly, water availability to plants is measured by soil moisture, which is the direct link between precipitation and ecological systems (WELTZIN et al., 2003). As long as our understanding of basic precipitation processes that accounts for vegetation interactions, such as interception, infiltration and runoff are relatively well understood (BONAN, 2016); describing, quantifying and modeling soil moisture changing rates at large spatially and continuous temporal scales, moreover, their relationships with ecosystems distribution and productivity, remains a challenge to be overcome (SCHWINNING et al., 2004; FEKETE; PISACANE; WISSER, 2016). This challenge is especially true in mountainous regions, where topography plays an important role on water availability partioning and, moreover, largely used technics on its estimations, such as microwave remotely sensed data, are perturbed by surface roughness.    In seasonally dry mountainous environments, land surface phenology, a major ecosystem functioning component, have been shown to be directly influenced by topography, since topographic features controls water availability and, therefore, leaf production and senescence (Streher 2017).  Seasonally dry tropical environments are expected to experience future changes on their season periodicity caused by climate change, with possible impacts on ecosystems functioning and production. In this way, understanding and quantifying the seasonal patterns of plant water use and its spatial-temporal distribution may provide insight into tropical mountainous ecosystems behavior under future climate change conditions.