IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0126044.html

Trend Patterns of Vegetative Coverage and Their Underlying Causes in the Deserts of Northwest China over 1982 – 2008

Author

Listed:
  • Tianyi Zhang
  • Hesong Wang

Abstract

We identified the spatiotemporal patterns of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) for the years 1982–2008 in the desert areas of Northwest China and quantified the impacts of climate and non-climate factors on NDVI changes. The results indicate that although the mean NDVI has improved in 24.7% of the study region; 16.3% among the region has been stagnating in recent years and only 8.4% had a significantly increasing trend. Additionally, 45.3% of the region has maintained a stable trend over the study period and 30.0% has declined. A multiple regression model suggests that a wetter climate (quantified by the Palmer Drought Severity Index, PDSI) is associated with higher NDVI in most areas (18.1% of significance) but these historical changes in PDSI only caused an average improvement of approximately 0.4% over the study region. Contrasting the regression results under different trend patterns, no significant differences in PDSI impacts were detected among the four trend patterns. Therefore, we conclude that climate is not the primary driver for vegetative coverage in Northwest China. Future studies will be required to identify the impacts of specific non-climatic factors on vegetative coverage based on high-resolution data, which will be beneficial in creating an effective strategy to combat the recent desertification trend in China.

Suggested Citation

  • Tianyi Zhang & Hesong Wang, 2015. "Trend Patterns of Vegetative Coverage and Their Underlying Causes in the Deserts of Northwest China over 1982 – 2008," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-14, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0126044
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0126044
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0126044
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0126044&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0126044?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Justin Sheffield & Eric F. Wood & Michael L. Roderick, 2012. "Little change in global drought over the past 60 years," Nature, Nature, vol. 491(7424), pages 435-438, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Linghui Guo & Yuanyuan Luo & Yao Li & Tianping Wang & Jiangbo Gao & Hebing Zhang & Youfeng Zou & Shaohong Wu, 2023. "Spatiotemporal Changes and the Prediction of Drought Characteristics in a Major Grain-Producing Area of China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(22), pages 1-19, November.
    2. Kaustubh Salvi & Subimal Ghosh, 2016. "Projections of Extreme Dry and Wet Spells in the 21st Century India Using Stationary and Non-stationary Standardized Precipitation Indices," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 667-681, December.
    3. Hongli Wang & Yongxiang Zhang & Xuemei Shao, 2021. "A tree-ring-based drought reconstruction from 1466 to 2013 CE for the Aksu area, western China," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-16, March.
    4. Ashenafi Yimam Kassaye & Guangcheng Shao & Xiaojun Wang & Shiqing Wu, 2021. "Quantification of drought severity change in Ethiopia during 1952–2017," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 5096-5121, April.
    5. Anzhen Li & Shengbo Chen & Kaishan Song & Yuanzhi Zhang & Zongming Wang & Dehua Mao, 2026. "African inland wetland area on the rise during the 21st century," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 17(1), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Pere Quintana-Seguí & Anaïs Barella-Ortiz & Sabela Regueiro-Sanfiz & Gonzalo Miguez-Macho, 2020. "The Utility of Land-Surface Model Simulations to Provide Drought Information in a Water Management Context Using Global and Local Forcing Datasets," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 34(7), pages 2135-2156, May.
    7. Francisco José Del-Toro-Guerrero & Luis Walter Daesslé & Rodrigo Méndez-Alonzo & Thomas Kretzschmar, 2022. "Surface Reflectance–Derived Spectral Indices for Drought Detection: Application to the Guadalupe Valley Basin, Baja California, Mexico," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-19, May.
    8. Zhang, Yuliang & Wu, Zhiyong & Singh, Vijay P. & Lin, Qingxia & Ning, Shaowei & Zhou, Yuliang & Jin, Juliang & Zhou, Rongxing & Ma, Qiang, 2023. "Agricultural drought characteristics in a typical plain region considering irrigation, crop growth, and water demand impacts," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 282(C).
    9. Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano & Miquel Tomas-Burguera & Santiago Beguería & Fergus Reig & Borja Latorre & Marina Peña-Gallardo & M. Yolanda Luna & Ana Morata & José C. González-Hidalgo, 2017. "A High Resolution Dataset of Drought Indices for Spain," Data, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-10, June.
    10. Benjamin L. Turner & Hector M. Menendez & Roger Gates & Luis O. Tedeschi & Alberto S. Atzori, 2016. "System Dynamics Modeling for Agricultural and Natural Resource Management Issues: Review of Some Past Cases and Forecasting Future Roles," Resources, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-24, November.
    11. repec:avg:wpaper:en18043 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Lomborg, Bjorn, 2020. "Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost of climate policies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    13. Xinyu Fu & Mark Svoboda & Zhenghong Tang & Zhijun Dai & Jianjun Wu, 2013. "An overview of US state drought plans: crisis or risk management?," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 69(3), pages 1607-1627, December.
    14. Evan Girvetz & Chris Zganjar, 2014. "Dissecting indices of aridity for assessing the impacts of global climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 126(3), pages 469-483, October.
    15. Sergio M. Vicente‐Serrano & Tim R. McVicar & Diego G. Miralles & Yuting Yang & Miquel Tomas‐Burguera, 2020. "Unraveling the influence of atmospheric evaporative demand on drought and its response to climate change," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), March.
    16. Zuliqar Ali & Ijaz Hussain & Muhammad Faisal & Hafiza Mamona Nazir & Mitwali Abd-el Moemen & Tajammal Hussain & Sadaf Shamsuddin, 2017. "A Novel Multi-Scalar Drought Index for Monitoring Drought: the Standardized Precipitation Temperature Index," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 31(15), pages 4957-4969, December.
    17. Anlan Feng & Qiang Zhang & Xihui Gu & Vijay P. Singh & Lei Hu & Yixin Sun & Jiaqi Zhao, 2025. "Compound drought-heatwaves in China: driving factors and risks," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 121(18), pages 21283-21303, November.
    18. Lei Zou & Jun Xia & Dunxian She, 2018. "Analysis of Impacts of Climate Change and Human Activities on Hydrological Drought: a Case Study in the Wei River Basin, China," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 32(4), pages 1421-1438, March.
    19. U. Surendran & B. Anagha & P. Raja & V. Kumar & K. Rajan & M. Jayakumar, 2019. "Analysis of Drought from Humid, Semi-Arid and Arid Regions of India Using DrinC Model with Different Drought Indices," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(4), pages 1521-1540, March.
    20. Anthony S. Kiem & Fiona Johnson & Seth Westra & Albert Dijk & Jason P. Evans & Alison O’Donnell & Alexandra Rouillard & Cameron Barr & Jonathan Tyler & Mark Thyer & Doerte Jakob & Fitsum Woldemeskel &, 2016. "Natural hazards in Australia: droughts," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 139(1), pages 37-54, November.
    21. Ziqian Zhong & Hans W. Chen & Aiguo Dai & Tianjun Zhou & Bin He & Bo Su, 2025. "Sub-diurnal asymmetric warming has amplified atmospheric dryness since the 1980s," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0126044. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.