Abstract
Songnen Plain is a representative semi-arid marshland in China. The Songnen Plain marshes have undergone obvious loss during the past decades. In order to protect and restore wetland vegetation, it is urgent to investigate the vegetation change and its response to climate change in the Songnen Plain marshes. Based on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and climate data, we investigated the spatiotemporal change of vegetation and its relationship with temperature and precipitation in the Songnen Plain marshes. During 2000–2016, the growing season mean NDVI of the Songnen Plain marshes significantly (p < 0.01) increased at a rate of 0.06/decade. For the climate change effects on vegetation, the growing season precipitation had a significant positive effect on the growing season NDVI of marshes. In addition, this study first found asymmetric effects of daytime maximum temperature (Tmax) and nighttime minimum temperature (Tmin) on NDVI of the Songnen Plain marshes: The growing season NDVI correlated negatively with Tmax but positively with Tmin. Considering the global asymmetric warming of Tmax and Tmin, more attention should be paid to these asymmetric effects of Tmax and Tmin on the vegetation of marshes.
Highlights
Marshes are an important type of wetland ecosystem worldwide, and recent research suggests that marshes may have an important role in the global carbon cycle [1,2,3]
The reduced growing season normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) accounted for only 13% of the marshes in the study area, which was mainly concentrated in the northeast of Songnen Plain (Figure 4)
During 2000–2016, the growing season NDVI of marshes significantly increased at a rate of 0.06/decade over the whole Songnen Plain
Summary
Marshes are an important type of wetland ecosystem worldwide, and recent research suggests that marshes may have an important role in the global carbon cycle [1,2,3]. The structure and composition of marsh vegetation can have significant effects on biodiversity and carbon burial of the marsh ecosystem under a rapidly changing climate [8,9]. Because climate change has significant effects on vegetation in the world, exploring the impacts of climate change on vegetation has become a hot topic of current global change research [12,13]. It is reported that climate change, including changes in temperature and precipitation regimes, can have significant effects on wetland vegetation on global and regional scales [14]. Studies focused on the mangrove–marsh ecotone in North America and the mangrove transition zones in New Zealand and eastern Australia have found that temperature regimes can have a large impact on tidal saline vegetation aboveground biomass and canopy height [17,22,23,24]. Under the background of the global climate change, investigating the effects of climate change on marsh vegetation is crucial to further understand the relationships between climate change and vegetation on a global level
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