Abstract
The research on the spatiotemporal changes and driving factors of ecosystems in rapidly urbanizing regions has always been a topic of widespread concern. As the fourth pole of China’s economic development, the research on the Chengdu-Chongqing region has reference significance for the urbanization process of developing countries such as India, Brazil, and South Africa.The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) has been widely applied in studies of plant and ecosystem changes. Based on MODIS NDVI data from 2001 to 2020 and meteorological data of the same period, this study reveals the evolution of NDVI in the Chengdu-Chongqing region from three aspects: the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of NDVI, the prediction of future trends in vegetation coverage, and the response of vegetation to climate change and human activities. During the period of plant growth, the mean NDVI achieved a value of 0.78, and the vegetation coverage rate is increasing year by year. According to the Hurst index, the future NDVI in Chengdu-Chongqing region will tend to decrease, and its trend is opposite to that of the past period of time. The Chengdu-Chongqing region vegetation positively affected by human activities is greater than those negatively affected, and in terms of vegetation degradation, the impact of human activities is greater than climate change.
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The datasets generated during and/o analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) and the National Tibetan Plateau Data Center for providing data support. Moreover, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback that improved this paper.
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Conceptualization, W.Y. and W.J.; methodology, Z.L. and Z.Y.; software, Z.L., W.J., and Z.Y.; formal analysis, W.J., W.Y., and Z.L.; data curation, Z.L. and L.X.; writing—original draft preparation, Z.L., Z.Y., W.J., L.X., and W.Y.; writing—review and editing, W.Y.; visualization, Z.L., Z.Y., W.J., and L.X.; supervision, W.Y.; project administration, W.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Zhang, L., Zhang, Y., Wang, J. et al. Spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and driving forces of vegetation cover variations in the Chengdu-Chongqing region of China under the background of rapid urbanization. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 22976–22993 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-32645-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-32645-y