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Effect of climate and ecological restoration on vegetation changes in the “Three-River Headwaters” region based on remote sensing technology

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Abstract

Surface temperature and precipitation are factors effecting vegetation growth. Vegetation coverage change is one of the important factors influencing global and regional climate change. Dynamic monitoring of vegetation change can reflect the trend of climate change to a certain extent. Three-River Headwaters are located in the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It has the characteristics of “high, cold, and dry” (higher altitude, cold and dry weather) and its ecosystem is fragile. In recent years, with the global climate change, a series of eco-environmental problems such as river flow cutoff, permafrost degradation, and vegetation destruction has occurred in the headwaters area, which are closely related to climate and vegetation changes. At the same time, in order to solve the problem of ecological environment degradation in the region, various ecological restoration policies have implemented. Several uncertainties in the relationship between vegetation and climate change in the Three-River Headwaters region. This study aims to find out the uncertainties. In this study, the spatial distribution of vegetation coverage was calculated by using NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) from the first-level product of MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) remote sensing data. Combining policy factors, the relationship between rainfall, surface temperature, and vegetation growth status were analyzed. The results show that during the study period (1948–2019), the temperature rose significantly and the rainfall increased especially after the implementation of ecological restoration policy (after 2000). Vegetation coverage increased year-by-year (2000–2015). The rainfall effect on surface temperature and vegetation growth, when the summer rainfall increased, the temperature decreased, leads to vegetation coverage decreased (for example, 2001, 2003, 2008 and 2011); the dependence of vegetation on rainfall has obvious lag in Three-River Headwaters in summer. In the years with suitable rainfall and higher temperature in summer, the vegetation grows better and the vegetation coverage increases. This is mainly because the Three-River Headwaters is located in the alpine zone, and vegetation growth is more dependent on temperature. The implementation of ecological restoration policy promotes vegetation coverage. Studying the impact of climate and policy factors on vegetation cover is of great scientific significance and practical value for understanding the ecological restoration mechanism in high cold and arid regions.

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Data availability

The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) we use is available for download from Geospatial Data Clouds, Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences at http://www.gscloud.cn/. The precipitation daily data we use is available for download from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) at https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/gpcc-global-precipitation-climatology-centre. Hydrological data we use is obtained from the Yellow River Sediment Bulleting, Yellow River Conservancy Commission of Ministry of Water Resources. The surface temperature was acquired from NCEP datasets (National Weather Service National Centers for Environmental Prediction, https://www.ncep.noaa.gov/).

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Funding

This study is supported by the open research fund program of State Key Laboratory of Hydroscience and Engineering, Tsinghua University (sklhse-2021-B-01), the State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University (Grant No. 2018-KF-02), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51479179 and 51579230), the Science Foundation of Zhejiang Ocean University (Grant NO. 21105011713), and Innovation and Development of Social Science in Anhui Province (No. 2019CX016).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Marine Science and Technology, Zhejiang Ocean University, Zhejiang, 316022, Zhoushan, People’s Republic of China

    Biyun Guo, Jushang Wang & Venkata Subrahmanyam Mantravadi

  2. State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University, Xining, 810016, Qinghai, People’s Republic of China

    Biyun Guo

  3. School of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, People’s Republic of China

    Li Zhang

  4. College of Forestry, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, 712100, People’s Republic of China

    Guangzhe Liu

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  1. Biyun Guo
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  2. Jushang Wang
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  3. Venkata Subrahmanyam Mantravadi
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  4. Li Zhang
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Contributions

Biyun Guo: conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, writing—original draft preparation. Jushang Wang: data curation. Venkata Subrahmanyam Mantravadi: data curation, writing—reviewing and editing. Li Zhang: data curation. Guangzhe Liu: investigation.

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Correspondence to Biyun Guo or Venkata Subrahmanyam Mantravadi.

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Guo, B., Wang, J., Mantravadi, V.S. et al. Effect of climate and ecological restoration on vegetation changes in the “Three-River Headwaters” region based on remote sensing technology. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 16436–16448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16927-3

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