Attribution of satellite-observed vegetation trends in a hyper-arid region of the Heihe River basin, Western China

Abstract. Terrestrial vegetation dynamics are closely influenced by both climate and by both climate and by land use and/or land cover change (LULCC) caused by human activities. Both can change over time in a monotonic way and it can be difficult to separate the effects of climate change from LULCC on vegetation. Here we attempt to attribute trends in the fractional green vegetation cover to climate variability and to human activity in Ejina Region, a hyper-arid landlocked region in northwest China. This region is dominated by extensive deserts with relatively small areas of irrigation located along the major water courses as is typical throughout much of Central Asia. Variations of fractional vegetation cover from 2000 to 2012 were determined using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation index data with 250 m spatial resolution over 16-day intervals. We found that the fractional vegetation cover in this hyper-arid region is very low but that the mean growing season vegetation cover has increased from 3.4% in 2000 to 4.5% in 2012. The largest contribution to the overall greening was due to changes in green vegetation cover of the extensive desert areas with a smaller contribution due to changes in the area of irrigated land. Comprehensive analysis with different precipitation data sources found that the greening of the desert was associated with increases in regional precipitation. We further report that the area of land irrigated each year can be predicted using the runoff gauged 1 year earlier. Taken together, water availability both from precipitation in the desert and runoff inflow for the irrigation agricultural lands can explain at least 52% of the total variance in regional vegetation cover from 2000 to 2010. The results demonstrate that it is possible to separate the satellite-observed changes in green vegetation cover into components due to climate and human modifications. Such results inform management on the implications for water allocation between oases in the middle and lower reaches and for water management in the Ejina oasis.