Vegetation response to changes in temperature, rainfall, and dust in arid environments

Climate change is responsible for changes in the world's vegetation. This study was aimed to investigate the effect of long-term variations in the air temperature, precipitation, and dust concentration on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) variations in the spring, summer, and growing season over arid regions of Iran. The results showed that the precipitation had a positive association with the NDVI in the spring and growing seasons (β > + 0.28; P < 0.05), while air temperature had a negative relationship with the NDVI changes in these seasons (β > - 0.34; P = 0.013). Our results also showed a negative relationship between the accumulated dust concentration (ADC) and NDVI in the spring (β = - 0.23; P = 0.09) and growing seasons (β = - 0.24; P = 0.003). Spatially, the strongest linkage between NDVI and climatic variables was observed in about two-thirds of the study region. In total, our findings indicate that the use of dust concentration, air temperature, and precipitation helps us to make a more accurate approach for evaluating the impacts of climate change on vegetation variations in the arid environments.