Abstract
China defined 25 National Key Ecological Function Areas in 2010 and adopted various measures to support ecosystem restoration in these areas. During the process of environment policymaking, it is important to observe the variation of vegetation and its driving factors. In this paper, we chose the National Key Ecological Function Area (NKEFA) on Loess Plateau as the study area. Based on MODIS‐NDVI data between 2000 and 2015, the trend analysis was used to depict the change in NDVI and the stepwise regression analysis method was used to quantitatively assess its determinants. The results show that: (a) The vegetation coverage in study area was low in the northwest and high in the southeast, corresponding to the distribution of precipitation and temperature. (b) NDVI in the growing season increased remarkably from 0.2841 in 2000 to 0.4199 in 2015 with a linear tendency of 0.085/10a. About 71.22% of the study area experienced an extremely significant increasing of NDVI, while only 0.03% of the total area suffered from significant decreasing of NDVI. (c) Compared to climatic factors, ecosystem conservation policies, and labor transfer contributed more to the vegetation changes in the study area. In order to ensure ecological security and sustainable development in these areas, it is necessary to maintain the continuity of ecological compensation policy. Moreover, developing targeted eco‐compensation policies and encouraging farmers to participate in nonfarm employment are effective ways to reach a win–win outcome of reducing the ecosystem pressure and improving the welfare of rural households.
Highlights
The spatiotemporal variation of vegetation is the result of interaction between climate factors and human activities
The study of dynamic vegetation change is helpful to understand the role of ecological protection policy in ecosystem restoration, which can provide some academic support for policy makers in sustainable natural resources utilization and ecosystem conservation
The results showed that NDVI in study area is low in the northwest and high in the southeast, corresponding to the distribution of desert, steppe, and forest
Summary
The spatiotemporal variation of vegetation is the result of interaction between climate factors and human activities. In National Key Ecological Functional Areas (NKEFA) on Loess Plateau, human activities like ecological protection policies or labor force transfer may have more influence on vegetation condition. Zheng et al (2019) distinguished that the contribution of climate change and human activities to grassland variation on Loess Plateau was 57.65% and 42.35% during 2000 to 2016. Under the joint effects of ecological protection policies, rural labor transfer, and climate change, how would the vegetation coverage change? We selected the NKEFA on Loess Plateau as the study area, based on MODIS‐NDVI data between 2000 and 2015, analyzed the spatiotemporal changes in NDVI, and quantitatively explored the impact of climatic factors and human activities on NDVI changes. The study of dynamic vegetation change is helpful to understand the role of ecological protection policy in ecosystem restoration, which can provide some academic support for policy makers in sustainable natural resources utilization and ecosystem conservation
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