Climate and Environmental Change

Seasonal characters of regional vegetation activity in response to climate change in West China in recent 20 years

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  • 1. Key Laboratory of Arid Climatic Change and Disaster Reduction of Gansu Province and China Meteorological Administration, Institute of Arid Meteorology, China Meteorological Administration, Lanzhou 730020, China
    2. Indiana University, 47408, USA
    3. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, CAS, Lanzhou 730000, China

Received date: 2005-06-29

  Revised date: 2005-10-20

  Online published: 2006-03-25

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40205014; No.40175004; Project of Gansu Province, No.3ZS051-A25-011; Item of the Ministry of Science and Technology, No.2004BA901A16; No.2004DIB5J192

Abstract

Using NDVI data of NOAA-AVHRR in recent 20 years and the temperature and precipitation data of West China, the vegetation activity is discussed by adopting the EOF and REOF decomposed functions. Results show that the overall increasing trend of vegetation activity in different seasons reflects an advanced and prolonged growth period of vegetation under the circumstance of climate warming, but the vegetation evolvement has much inconsistency between different regions and seasons. There are four notable regions, eight sub-areas for vegetation evolvement in spring and summer, and nine sub-areas in autumn. The vegetation activity in most sub-areas is increasing. The most notable region is represented by Lhaze station on the Tibetan Plateau. Two other marked stations are represented by Altay station in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Pengshui station in Sichuan Province. But the time series analysis of NDVI makes clear that the trends of the other two sub-areas, Turpan station in Xinjiang and Huashan station in Shaanxi Province, are descending. It is an important reason for vegetation evolvement that temperature ascends in most of the regions and descends in the east region in some seasons. But another important reason for vegetation evolvement is that precipitation is ascending in the west and descending in the east of the region.

Cite this article

ZHANG Jie, ZHANG Qiang, YANG Lihua, LI Dongliang . Seasonal characters of regional vegetation activity in response to climate change in West China in recent 20 years[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2006 , 16(1) : 78 -86 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-006-0108-0

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