Vegetation Responses to Climate Change and Anthropogenic Activity in China, 1982 to 2018

Jie Li; Mengfei Xi; Lijun Wang; Ning Li; Huawei Wang; Fen Qin

doi:10.3390/ijerph19127391

Vegetation Responses to Climate Change and Anthropogenic Activity in China, 1982 to 2018

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jun 16;19(12):7391. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19127391.

Authors

Jie Li^{1

2}, Mengfei Xi^{1

2}, Lijun Wang^{1

2}, Ning Li^{1

2

3}, Huawei Wang^{1

2}, Fen Qin^{1

2

3

4}

Affiliations

¹ College of Geography and Environmental Science, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China.
² Key Laboratory of Geospatial Technology for the Middle and Lower Yellow River Regions, Ministry of Education, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China.
³ Henan Industrial Technology Academy of Spatio-Temporal Big Data, Henan Univesity, Kaifeng 475004, China.
⁴ Henan Technology Innovation Center of Spatial-Temporal Big Data, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China.

Abstract

Climate change and human activities significantly affect vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems. Here, data reconstruction was performed to obtain a time series of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) for China (1982−2018) based on Savitzky−Golay filtered GIMMS NDVI3g and MOD13A2 datasets. Combining surface temperature and precipitation observations from more than 2000 meteorological stations in China, Theil−Sen trend analysis, Mann−Kendall significance tests, Pearson correlation analysis, and residual trend analysis were used to quantitatively analyze the long-term trends of vegetation changes and their sources of uncertainty. Significant spatial and temporal heterogeneity was observed in vegetation changes in the study area. From 1982 to 2018, the vegetation showed a gradually increasing trend, at a rate of 0.5%·10 a−1, significantly improving (37.15%, p < 0.05) more than the significant degradation (7.46%, p < 0.05). Broadleaf (0.66) and coniferous forests (0.62) had higher NDVI, and farmland had the fastest rate of increase (1.02%/10 a−1). Temperature significantly affected the vegetation growth in spring (R > 0; p < 0.05); however, the increase in summer temperatures significantly inhibited (R < 0; p < 0.05) the growth in North China (RNDVI-tem = −0.379) and the Qinghai−Tibetan Plateau (RNDVI-tem = −0.051). Climate change has highly promoted the growth of vegetation in the plain region of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River (3.24%), Northwest China (1.07%). Affected by human activities only, 49.89% of the vegetation showed an increasing trend, of which 22.91% increased significantly (p < 0.05) and 9.97% decreased significantly (p < 0.05). Emergency mitigation actions are required in Northeast China, Xinjiang, Northwest China, and the Qinghai−Tibetan Plateau. Therefore, monitoring vegetation changes is important for ecological environment construction and promoting regional ecological protection.

Keywords: GIMMS NDVI3g; MOD13A2; climate change; human activity; normalized difference vegetation index.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Anthropogenic Effects
China
Climate Change*
Ecosystem*
Human Activities
Humans
Temperature

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Science and Technology Platform Construction, grant number 2005DKA32300; the Major Research Projects of the Ministry of Education, grant number 16JJD770019; and The Open Program of Collaborative Innovation Center of Geo-Information Technology for Smart Central Plains Henan Province, grant number G202006; and the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 42001034.