Regional dynamics of terrestrial vegetation productivity and climate feedbacks for territory of Ukraine

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to affect terrestrial ecosystems and, thereby, the carbon cycle. Various vegetation biomes are likely to respond differently to changes in climatic factors. The purpose of this study was to analyse the trends of the terrestrial vegetation productivity and climate drivers on regional levels and relations between ones. The gross primary productivity from the global satellite-based terrestrial production efficiency model (PEM) MOD17 as the vegetation productivity indicator and meteorological data from the weather station network as climatic indicators were used. The analysis covered a period from 2000 to 2012. Correlation analysis was used to quantify the association between the vegetation productivity and climatic indicators for different growing seasons and landscape-climatic zones of Ukraine. The Mann–Kendall trend test was applied to take into account seasonal features. Multiple linear regression models for corresponding seasons and zones have been simulated using the principal component analysis. The results showed no detectable limiting effect of the climatic drivers on plant productivity for forest areas. The limiting effect of the temperature increasing and precipitation amount decreasing for the steppe zone and eastern forest-steppe subzone of Ukraine for summer was observed.