Abstract
In recent decades, the monitoring of vegetation dynamics has become crucial because of its important role in terrestrial ecosystems. In this study, a satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was combined with climate factors to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of vegetation change during the growing season, as well as their driving forces in China from 2001 to 2012. Our results showed that the growing season NDVI increased continuously during 2001–2012, with a linear trend of 1.4%/10 years (p < 0.01). The NDVI in north China mainly exhibited an increasing spatial trend, but this trend was generally decreasing in south China. The vegetation dynamics were mainly at a moderate intensity level in both the increasing and decreasing areas. The significantly increasing trend in the NDVI for arid and semi-arid areas of northwest China was attributed mainly to an increasing trend in the NDVI during the spring, whereas that for the north and northeast of China was due to an increasing trend in the NDVI during the summer and autumn. Different vegetation types exhibited great variation in their trends, where the grass-forb community had the highest linear trend of 2%/10 years (p < 0.05), followed by meadow, and needle-leaf forest with the lowest increasing trend, i.e., a linear trend of 0.3%/10 years. Our results also suggested that the cumulative precipitation during the growing season had a dominant effect on the vegetation dynamics compared with temperature for all six vegetation types. In addition, the response of different vegetation types to climate variability exhibited considerable differences. In terms of anthropological activity, our statistical analyses showed that there was a strong correlation between the cumulative afforestation area and NDVI during the study period, especially in a pilot region for ecological restoration, thereby suggesting the important role of ecological restoration programs in ecological recovery throughout China in the last decade.
Highlights
In recent decades, global climate change has affected the characteristics of vegetation throughout the world [1,2]
(1) How the vegetation dynamics in China responded to rapid climate change and large-scale ecological restoration? (2) How the different vegetation types changed in response to climate change?
During the 12-year investigation period (2001–2012), the average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for China increased with a linear trend of 1.4%/10 years (p < 0.01)
Summary
Global climate change has affected the characteristics of vegetation throughout the world [1,2]. The instrumentderived temperature records obtained in recent decades provide convincing evidence that northern terrestrial ecosystems have experienced the greatest warming rate throughout the world, during the winter and spring [5,6], which has been reported to have significant regional impacts on the function and integrity of ecosystems from global to local scales [7,8,9,10,11]. Achieving a good understanding of vegetation dynamics and their driving forces is a major objective in the environmental sciences, when studying the effects of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems [15]
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