Journal
REMOTE SENSING
Volume 14, Issue 16, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/rs14163911
Keywords
ecosystem indicators; climate change; human activities; climate zones
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [41875122]
- Western Talents [2018XBYJRC004]
- Guangdong Top Young Talents [2017TQ04Z359]
- Western China Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences [Y932121]
- Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China [2021A1515011429]
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Understanding the impacts of climate change and human activities on ecosystems is crucial. This study investigated the effects of climate variation and human activities on major indicators of ecosystem functions and conditions in Xinjiang, a typical arid and semi-arid region in China. The results show that human activities have a significant influence on ecosystem indicators in arid and semi-arid zones.
Understanding the impacts and extent of both climate change and human activities on ecosystems is crucial to sustainable development. With low anti-interference ability, arid and semi-arid ecosystems are particularly sensitive to disturbances from both climate change and human activities. We investigated how and to what extent climate variation and human activities influenced major indicators that are related to ecosystem functions and conditions in the past decades in Xinjiang, a typical arid and semi-arid region in China. We analyzed the changing trends of evapotranspiration (ET), gross primary productivity (GPP) and leaf area index (LAI) derived from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite product and the Breathing Earth System Simulator (BESS) model in Xinjiang for different climate zones. We separated and quantified the contributions of climate forcing and human activities on the trends of the studied ecosystem indicators using the residual analysis method for different climate zones in Xinjiang. The results show that GPP and LAI increased and ET decreased from 2001 to 2015 in Xinjiang. Factors that dominate the changes in ecosystem indicators vary considerably across different climate zones. Precipitation plays a positive role in impacting vegetation indicators in arid and hyper-arid zones and temperature has a negative correlation with both GPP and LAI in hyper-arid zones in Xinjiang. Results based on residual analysis indicate that human activities could account for over 72% of variation in the changes in each ecosystem indicator. Human activities have large impacts on each vegetation indicator change in hyper-arid and arid zones and their relative contribution has a mean value of 79%. This study quantifies the roles of climate forcing and human activities in the changes in ecosystem indicators across different climate zones, suggesting that human activities largely influence ecosystem processes in the arid and semi-arid regions of Xinjiang in China.
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