Response of vegetation cover over Shaanxi province to global warming

摘要

Variations in vegetation cover and its response to global warming are important to understand the interaction between Ecology system and Climate system. Using temperature dataset from Climatic Research Unit (CRU) TS3.0 and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from NOAA/AVHRR, the trends of annual mean temperature and annual mean NDVI over Shaanxi province of China were investigated during the period from 1982 to 2006. The results show that the increasing trends of temperature and NDVI were both evident. The correlation coefficient between temperature and NDVI was 0.534 (P<0.01), suggesting that the increase/decrease in NDVI is well associated with the increase/decrease in temperature. Furthermore, the prolonged growing period, through which the rising temperature facilitates the vegetation activities, was also positively correlated with NDVI.