Impacts of climate change and human activities on vegetation coverage variation in mountainous and hilly areas in Central South of Shandong Province based on tree-ring

Tingting Yin; Yinuo Zhai; Yan Zhang; Wenjun Yang; Jinbin Dong; Xiao Liu; Peixian Fan; Chao You; Linqian Yu; Qun Gao; Hui Wang; Peiming Zheng; Renqing Wang

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1158221

Impacts of climate change and human activities on vegetation coverage variation in mountainous and hilly areas in Central South of Shandong Province based on tree-ring

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jun 5:14:1158221. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1158221. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Tingting Yin^{1

2

3}, Yinuo Zhai^{1

2

3}, Yan Zhang^{1

2

3}, Wenjun Yang^{1

2

3}, Jinbin Dong^{1

4}, Xiao Liu^{1

2

3}, Peixian Fan³, Chao You³, Linqian Yu³, Qun Gao³, Hui Wang^{1

2

3}, Peiming Zheng^{1

2

3}, Renqing Wang^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity, School of Life Sciences, Shandong University, Qingdao, China.
² Shandong Provincial Engineering and Technology Research Center for Vegetation Ecology, Shandong University, Qingdao, China.
³ Qingdao Forest Ecology Research Station of National Forestry and Grassland Administration, Shandong University, Qingdao, China.
⁴ Shandong Huankeyuan Environmental Testing Co., Ltd., Jinan, China.

Abstract

Introduction: It is of great significance to understand the characteristics and influencing factors of vegetation coverage variation in the warm temperate zone. As a typical region of the warm temperate zone in eastern China, the mountainous and hilly region in central-south Shandong Province has fragile ecological environment and soil erosion problem. Studying on vegetation dynamics and its influencing factors in this region will help to better understand the relationship between climate change and vegetation cover change in the warm temperate zone of eastern China, and the influence of human activities on vegetation cover dynamics.

Methods: Based on dendrochronology, a standard tree-ring width chronology was established in the mountainous and hilly region of central-south Shandong Province, and the vegetation coverage from 1905 to 2020 was reconstructed to reveal the dynamic change characteristics of vegetation cover in this region. Secondly, the influence of climate factors and human activities on the dynamic change of vegetation cover was discussed through correlation analysis and residual analysis.

Results and discussion: In the reconstructed sequence, 23 years had high vegetation coverage and 15 years had low vegetation coverage. After low-pass filtering, the vegetation coverage of 1911-1913, 1945-1951, 1958-1962, 1994-1996, and 2007-2011 was relatively high, while the vegetation coverage of 1925-1927, 1936-1942, 2001-2003, and 2019-2020 was relatively low. Although precipitation determined the variation of vegetation coverage in this study area, the impacts of human activities on the change of vegetation coverage in the past decades cannot be ignored. With the development of social economy and the acceleration of urbanization, the vegetation coverage declined. Since the beginning of the 21st century, ecological projects such as Grain-for-Green have increased the vegetation coverage.

Keywords: anthropogenic activities; central-south shandong; climatic variation; dendrochronology; vegetation cover dynamic.

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the Special Foundation for National Science and Technology Basic Resources Investigation of China (2019FY202300), the Postdoctoral Innovation Project of Shandong (SDCX-ZG-202203031), the Applied Research Project Funds of Qingdao (61200072310073, 61200072310077), the Natural Science Foundation of Qingdao, and the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University (10000082292007).