Contrasting Changes in Vegetation Growth due to Different Climate Forcings over the Last Three Decades in the Selenga-Baikal Basin

Abstract

The Selenga-Baikal Basin, a transboundary river basin between Mongolia and Russia, warmed at nearly twice the global rate and experienced enhanced human activities in recent decades. To understand the vegetation response to climate change, the dynamic spatial-temporal characteristics of the vegetation and the relationships between the vegetation dynamics and climate variability in the Selenga-Baikal Basin were investigated using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and gridded temperature and precipitation data for the period of 1982 to 2015. Our results indicated that precipitation played a key role in vegetation growth across regions that presented multiyear mean annual precipitation lower than 350 mm, although its importance became less apparent over regions with precipitation exceeding 350 mm. Because of the overall temperature-limited conditions, temperature had a more substantial impact on vegetation growth than precipitation. Generally, an increasing trend was observed in the growth of forest vegetation, which is heavily dependent on temperature, whereas a decreasing trend was detected for grassland, for which the predominant growth-limiting factor is precipitation. Additionally, human activities, such as urbanization, mining, increased wildfires, illegal logging, and livestock overgrazing are important factors driving vegetation change.

Geographical Distribution and Environmental Correlates of Eleutherosides and Isofraxidin in Eleutherococcus senticosus from Natural Populations in Forests at Northeast China

“…Forest vegetation is a critical player in land-atmosphere interactions by regulating the energy, water, and carbon cycles [2]. Over the last decades, it was found that growth of temperate forest vegetation is heavily dependent on rising temperature [3,4]. In contrast, the rising (CO 2 ) consequence of this growth contributed to the increase of daily maximum temperature, which can reinforce the mean temperature increase in temperate forests [2].…”

Effects of Climatic Warming and Wildfires on Recent Vegetation Changes in the Lake Baikal Basin

“…Furthermore, the trends of climate (1979-2016) and land-cover changes (2000-2010) obtained by the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) with a resolution of 30 m in the Lake Baikal basin, can be found in Reference [8]. Similarly, the response of grassland and forest to temperature and precipitation in the Selenga-Baikal basin from 1982-2015 can be found in a recently published study by Wang and colleges [20].…”

“…Over the period of 2010-2018, the water surface area decreased by 0.12%. In previous studies, particularly in Reference [20], this question was not investigated. Note that, the behaviors of the changes in the permanent wetland and water surface areas were completely different ( Figure 3b).…”

“…Note that, in the Selenga-Baikal basin, the relationships between the dynamics of the normalized difference vegetation index (AVHRR, NDVI) and monthly gridded temperature and precipitation data from CRU version TS4.00 were investigated in Reference [20] for the period between 1982 and 2015.…”

“…In particular, the spatial distributions of the change in trends of seasonal temperature and precipitation over the Selenga-Baikal Basin were presented in a recently published paper [20]. According to Wang et al [20], the change in the summer temperature is in the range of 0.010-0.025 • C/year. Such values of temperature change are small with a significant direct effect on vegetation growth.…”