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Spatiotemporal changes and driving factors of vegetation in 14 different climatic regions in the global from 1981 to 2018

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Abstract

Climate change affects the change of vegetation, and the analysis of vegetation change and its drivers in different globe climate zones is important for ecological conservation, energy balances, and climate change in different global climate zones. Based on the vegetation leaf area index (LAI) and climate factor datasets, this paper uses an integrated empirical model decomposition, sensitivity rate, contribution rate, and geographic detector analysis method to study the vegetation drivers and their changes in 14 different climate zones around the globe from 1981 to 2018. The results showed that (1) Vegetation changes were sensitive to precipitation and evapotranspiration in arid climate zones and to temperature and soil temperature in cold climate zones. In the tundra climate zone, the sensitivity of vegetation change to temperature was higher than that to precipitation and evapotranspiration. (2) Soil moisture has the highest contribution to vegetation change, and the areas with absolute contribution rates over 60% account for 50.26% of the total area of global vegetation cover. The areas with high contributions of temperature and soil temperature to the LAI are mainly distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, which indicates that temperature has a high contribution to vegetation change in low-temperature environments. (3) The areas with significant increasing trends for the global vegetation LAIs accounted for approximately 15.32% of the total global vegetation cover (slope ≥ 0.01), which are mainly located in equatorial savannahs with dry winters, warm temperate climates with dry winters, and warm temperate climates with fully humid climatic zones. (4) The LAIs were dominated by medium-high fluctuations and sustainable increasing changes, which accounted for 61.27% and 69.34% of the total global vegetation cover area, respectively. (5) Globally, the driving factors influencing LAI changes are specific humidity, temperature, soil temperature, evapotranspiration, precipitation, and soil moisture in descending order, with the largest interaction effect of specific humidity and soil moisture on LAI changes. This research provides a scientific basis for vegetation change monitoring, driving mechanisms, and ecological protection in different climate regions around the globe.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the data support provided by the National Earth System Science Data Center at the National Science & Technology Infrastructure of China (http://www.geodata.cn). The data used in this study were acquired as part of the mission of NASA’s Earth Science Division and archived and distributed by the Goddard Earth Sciences (GES) Data and Information Services Center (DISC).

Funding

This study was supported by the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (8192037), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41701391), and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2014QD02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Geoscience and Surveying Engineering, China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing, 100083, China

    Guangchao Li, Wei Chen, Xuepeng Zhang, Zhe Wang & Pengshuai Bi

  2. College of Information Science and Engineering, Henan University of Technology, Zhengzhou, 450001, China

    Zhen Yang

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  1. Guangchao Li
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Contributions

Guangchao Li: software, validation, data curation, writing-original draft preparation. Wei Chen: conceptualization, methodology, software, investigation, writing-original draft preparation, writing-reviewing and editing, supervision. Xuepeng Zhang: formal analysis, visualization, investigation, validation. Pengshuai Bi: formal analysis, investigation, validation. Zhen Yang: writing-reviewing and editing. Zhe Wang: software, investigation.

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Correspondence to Wei Chen.

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Li, G., Chen, W., Zhang, X. et al. Spatiotemporal changes and driving factors of vegetation in 14 different climatic regions in the global from 1981 to 2018. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 75322–75337 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21138-5

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