Changes of Climate-Vegetation Ecosystem in Loess Plateau of China

The change of terrestrial ecosystem spatial distribution driven by climatic change is one of important factors leading to soil erosion in Loess Plateau. The quantitative analysis of climate change impacting on vegetation ecosystem will afford the efficient data to support the implement of reasonability ecological restoration project. HLZ ecosystem model is employed to simulate the changes of climate-vegetation ecosystem in Loess Plateau during the periods from 1964 to 1974 (C1), from 1975 to 1985 (C2), from 1986 to 1996 (C3), and from 1997 to 2007(C4) on spatial resolution of 1kmx1km. Combining the elevation data, the results show that there are 15 types of climate-vegetation ecosystem in which the cool temperate steppe, cool temperate moist forest and warm temperate are the major climate-vegetation types which respectively occupied the 82.73%, 83.19%, 82.86% during the periods from C1 to C4, and 79.77% of the sum area of Loess Plateau. The most types of moist climate-vegetation ecosystems have decreased since C1 period, especially the area of nival area, alpine wet tundra and alpine rain tundra have rapidly decreased during the four periods. Furthermore, the average distribution elevation of all climate-vegetation ecosystems distribution are on the increase except warm temperate thorn steppe, especially the average distribution elevation of alpine rain tundra, boreal wet forest, cool temperate scrub and warm temperate dry forest have continuously increased during the four periods. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier B. V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of School of Environment, Beijing Normal University.