Contributions of climatic factors to inter-annual variability of vegetation index in northern China grasslands

AbstractUnderstanding the atmosphere-land surface interaction is crucial to clarifying the responses and feedbacks of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change. However, quantifying the contributions of multiple climatic factors to vegetation dynamics is a challenge. Using the geographical detector model (GDM), this study quantifies the relative contributions of climate factors including precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, and air temperature to the inter-annual variation (IAV) of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in the northern grasslands of China during 2000–2016. The results suggest that heterogeneous geographical spatial pattern with interlaced distributions of determinant climatic factors on the IAV of NDVI was observed. Precipitation and relative humidity jointly controlled the IAV of NDVI, which accounted for higher proportions of areas and more explanatory power than solar radiation and air temperature in the whole study region. It is noteworthy that the IAV of NDVI ...