Separating Vegetation Greening and Climate Change Controls on Evapotranspiration trend over the Loess Plateau

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key ecological process connecting the soil-vegetation-atmosphere system, and its changes seriously affects the regional distribution of available water resources, especially in the arid and semiarid regions. With the Grain-for-Green project implemented in the Loess Plateau (LP) since 1999, water and heat distribution across the region have experienced great changes. Here, we investigate the changes and associated driving forces of ET in the LP from 2000 to 2012 using a remote sensing-based evapotranspiration model. Results show that annual ET significantly increased by 3.4 mm per year (p = 0.05) with large interannual fluctuations during the study period. This trend is higher than coincident increases in precipitation (2.0 mm yr(-2)), implying a possible pressure of water availability. The correlation analysis showed that vegetation change is the major controlling factor on interannual variability of annual ET with similar to 52.8% of pixels scattered in the strip region from the northeastern to southwestern parts of the LP. Further factorial analysis suggested that vegetation greening is the primary driver of the rises of ET over the study period relative to climate change. Our study can provide an improved understanding of the effects of vegetation and climate change on terrestrial ecosystem ET in the LP.