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NDVI dynamic changes and their relationship with meteorological factors and soil moisture

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Abstract

Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is an important indicator for measuring vegetation coverage, which is of great significance for evaluating vegetation dynamics and vegetation restoration. It can clearly analyze the suitable growth condition of vegetation by studying the relationship between meteorological factors, soil moisture and NDVI. Based on MODIS/NDVI data, the spatio-temporal characteristics of vegetation coverage in the Weihe River Basin (WRB) were analyzed by the trend analysis method. The relationship of NDVI with meteorological factors and NDVI with soil moisture simulated by the soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model was analyzed in this paper. The results show that NDVI values gradually change with an increase from north to south in the WRB. The maximum of the average monthly NDVI is 0.702 (August) and the minimum is 0.288 in February from 2000 to 2015. The results of the seven grades of NDVI trend line slope indicate that the improvement area of vegetation coverage accounts for 30.93% of the total basin, and the degradation area and basically unchanged area account for 23% and 42.9%, respectively. The annual mean soil moisture is 19.37% in the WRB. There was a strong correlation between NDVI and precipitation, temperature, evaporation and soil moisture, and the correlation coefficients were 0.78, 0.89, 0.71 and 0.65, respectively. The ranges of the most suitable growth conditions for vegetation are 80–145 mm (precipitation), 13–23 °C (temperature), 94–144 mm (evaporation) and 25–33% (soil moisture), respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (91647112, 51679189 and 51679187), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0400906) and Doctor Innovation Foundation of Xi’an University of Technology (310-252071605).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Eco-hydraulics in Northwest Arid Region of China, Xi’an University of Technology, Xi’an, China

    Hongxue Zhang, Jianxia Chang, Lianpeng Zhang, Yimin Wang, Yunyun Li & Xiaoyu Wang

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  1. Hongxue Zhang
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  2. Jianxia Chang
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  3. Lianpeng Zhang
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  4. Yimin Wang
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  5. Yunyun Li
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Correspondence to Jianxia Chang.

Additional information

This article is a part of a Topical Collection in Environmental Earth Sciences on Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, guest edited by Drs. Yanqing Lian, Walton Kelly, and Fulin Li.

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Zhang, H., Chang, J., Zhang, L. et al. NDVI dynamic changes and their relationship with meteorological factors and soil moisture. Environ Earth Sci 77, 582 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7759-x

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