Two decades of persistent greening in China despite 2023 climate extremes  

作　　者：Shankai WEI Xiangyi LI Kai WANG Tao WANG Shilong PIAO 

机构地区：[1]The Bartlett School of Environment Energy&Resources,University College London,London,WC1H 0NN,UK [2]College of Urban and Environmental Sciences,Peking University,Beijing,100871,China [3]Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing,100085,China

出　　处：《Science China Earth Sciences》2025年第4期1064-1073,共10页中国科学(地球科学英文版)

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.41988101)。

摘　　要：Whether the previous vegetation greening trend in China has persisted into the recent warmest decade and how the exceptional climate conditions of 2023 affected long-term change in vegetation greenness remain unexplored.Here we integrated two decades of remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index data with climate records to reveal a persistent greening(referring to the increasing trend of vegetation greenness)of China,occurring at a rate triple the global average,while the greening signal varies geographically.A prominent greening trend is primarily driven by the greening of humid and subhumid regions,consistent with the expected effects of rising CO_(2)on vegetation growth and intensified human practices including agricultural intensification and ambitious afforestation programs.By contrast,semi-arid and arid ecosystems showed non-significant greenness change due to drastic warming and precipitation fluctuations.The exceptional warming and precipitation reduction in 2023 did not trigger a record-high decrease in vegetation greenness when integrated across China.The vegetation greenness in 2023 instead reached the third highest on record which is contributed by enhancement in North China,Northeast China,and the Tibetan Plateau.Climatic extremes in 2023 induced significant browning in the Loess Plateau,Inner Mongolia,and Southwest China.While ecosystems especially in the southern China demonstrated relatively high resilience to climatic extreme events like high-temperature extremes and droughts,autumn greenness in 2023 can recover to levels even higher than the 2020–2022 average,despite significant browning in spring and summer.We,therefore,suggested that the 2023 climate extremes would not produce a new baseline from which vegetation growth will transition towards a state of degradation at both regional and national scales.

关 键 词：NDVI Vegetation greening China Climate extremes Human land management 

分 类 号：S718.5[农业科学—林学]