Satellite-observed changes in terrestrial vegetation growth trends across the Asia-Pacific region associated with land cover and climate from 1982 to 2011 |
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| Authors: | Baozhang Chen Guang Xu Nicholas C Coops Philippe Ciais Ranga B Myneni |
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| Institution: | 1. Key Laboratory of Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Combating, Ministry of Education, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;2. School of Environment Science and Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, People’s Republic of China;3. Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographic Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China;4. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China;6. Department of Forest Resource Management, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;7. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement, Unité Mixte de Recherche Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Gif-sur-Yvette, France;8. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA |
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| Abstract: | The Asia-Pacific (AP) region has experienced faster warming than the global average in recent decades and has experienced more climate extremes, however little is known about the response of vegetation growth to these changes. The updated Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies third-generation global satellite Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer Normalized Difference Vegetation Index dataset and gridded reanalysis climate data were used to investigate the spatiotemporal changes in both trends of vegetation dynamic indicators and climatic variables. We then further analyzed their relations associated with land cover across the AP region. The main findings are threefold: (1) at continental scales the AP region overall experienced a gradual and significant increasing trend in vegetation growth during the last three decades, and this NDVI trend corresponded with an insignificant increasing trend in temperature; (2) vegetation growth was negatively and significantly correlated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation index and the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in AP; and (3) at pixel scales, except for Australia, both vegetation growth and air temperature significantly increased in the majority of study regions and vegetation growth spatially correlated with temperature; In Australia and other water-limited regions vegetation growth positively correlated with precipitation. |
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| Keywords: | Vegetation dynamics NDVI climate change land cover Asia-Pacific region |
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