Abstract
Climate change has proven to have a profound impact on the growth of vegetation from various points of view. Understanding how vegetation changes and its response to climatic shift is of vital importance for describing their mutual relationships and projecting future land–climate interactions. Arid areas are considered to be regions that respond most strongly to climate change. Xinjiang, as a typical dryland in China, has received great attention lately for its unique ecological environment. However, comprehensive studies examining vegetation change and its driving factors across Xinjiang are rare. Here, we used the remote sensing datasets (MOD13A2 and TerraClimate) and data of meteorological stations to investigate the trends in the dynamic change in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and its response to climate change from 2000 to 2019 across Xinjiang based on the Google Earth platform. We found that the increment rates of growth-season mean and maximum NDVI were 0.0011 per year and 0.0013 per year, respectively, by averaging all of the pixels from the region. The results also showed that, compared with other land use types, cropland had the fastest greening rate, which was mainly distributed among the northern Tianshan Mountains and Southern Junggar Basin and the northern margin of the Tarim Basin. The vegetation browning areas primarily spread over the Ili River Valley where most grasslands were distributed. Moreover, there was a trend of warming and wetting across Xinjiang over the past 20 years; this was determined by analyzing the climate data. Through correlation analysis, we found that the contribution of precipitation to NDVI (R2 = 0.48) was greater than that of temperature to NDVI (R2 = 0.42) throughout Xinjiang. The Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) was also computed to better investigate the correlation between climate change and vegetation growth in arid areas. Our results could improve the local management of dryland ecosystems and provide insights into the complex interaction between vegetation and climate change.
Highlights
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Vegetation performs an essential part in terrestrial ecosystems, which influence soil, the atmosphere, moisture and other natural items [1,2]
The vegetation generally provides a low degree of coverage, and the ecosystem is relatively fragile and sensitive. It is an ideal area for researching vegetation changes and their correlation with climate change
The change rate in Xinjiang was derived by linear regression, which is a long time series plant growing season Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) change throughout the period from 2000 to 2019
Summary
Vegetation performs an essential part in terrestrial ecosystems, which influence soil, the atmosphere, moisture and other natural items [1,2]. It affects the balance of the energy of the earth–atmosphere system [3]. Vegetation and its dynamic changes have received much attention over the years [4,5,6,7]. Researching vegetation change in dryland is in the mainstream [8,9].
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