Please wait a minute...
Journal of Integrative Agriculture  2016, Vol. 15 Issue (05): 1145-1156    DOI: 10.1016/S2095-3119(15)61159-5
Soil & Fertilization﹒Irrigation﹒Plant Nutrition﹒ Agro-Ecology & Environment Advanced Online Publication | Current Issue | Archive | Adv Search |
Vegetation changes in the agricultural-pastoral areas of northern China from 2001 to 2013
SU Wei1, 4, YU De-yong1, SUN Zhong-ping2, 3, ZHAN Jun-ge4, LIU Xiao-xuan4, LUO Qian4
1 State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, P.R.China
2 State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science/School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, P.R.China
3 Satellite Environment Center, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Beijing 100094, P.R.China
4 College of Information and Electrical Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, P.R.China
Download:  PDF in ScienceDirect  
Export:  BibTeX | EndNote (RIS)      
Abstract      Climate change and human activity have resulted in increasing change of vegetation growth globally. Numerous studies have been conducted on extreme climate events and analyses of ecological environment evolution. However, such studies have placed little emphasis on vegetation change and spatial variation in this type of ecotone. Accordingly, this study analyzed the changes in vegetation type and growth using the 16-d composite MOD13A1 product with 1-km resolution and MOD12Q1 product with 1-km resolution. We used the mean, maximum, standard deviation normalized-difference vegetation index (NDVI) values, and the rate of change (ROC) of NDVI value to explain vegetation changes within the studied ecotone. Our results showed that significant vegetation type and growth changes have occurred in the study area. From 2001 to 2013, for example, with the exception of 2001, 2004 and 2009, a certain extent of grassland area was converted to cropland. Drought severity index (DSI) results indicate that there exists drought in 2001, 2004 and 2009. Such temporal changes in cropland and grassland area confirmed the ecological vulnerability of the ecotone. At the same time, vegetation varied spatially from west to east and from south to north. The mean, maximum and standard deviation NDVI values were all sorted in descending order based on differences in latitude and longitude, as follows: NDVI2013>NDVI2009>NDVI2004>NDVI2001
Keywords:  vegetation growth        agricultural-pastoral area        MODIS        land cover change        temporal change        spatial variation  
Received: 21 April 2015   Accepted:
Fund: 

This research was funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, 2014CB954301),  the Project of the State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resources Ecology, Beijing Normal University, China (2013-KF-11) and the Project of Ministry of Environmental Protection of China (257228006).

Corresponding Authors:  SUN Zhong-ping, Tel: +86-10-58311572, Fax: +86-10-58311501, E-mail: sunnybnu114@163.com    
About author:  SU Wei, E-mail: suwei7963@163.com

Cite this article: 

SU Wei, YU De-yong, SUN Zhong-ping, ZHAN Jun-ge, LIU Xiao-xuan, LUO Qian. 2016. Vegetation changes in the agricultural-pastoral areas of northern China from 2001 to 2013. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 15(05): 1145-1156.

Attrill M J, Rundle S D. 2002. Ecotone or ecocline: Ecological boundaries in estuaries. Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, 55, 929–936.

Battisti D S, Naylor R L. 2009. Historical warnings of future food insecurity with unprecedented seasonal heat. Science, 323, 240–244.

Bi J, Xu L, Samanta A, Zhu Z, Myneni R. 2013. Divergent arctic-boreal vegetation changes between north america and eurasia over the past 30 years. Remote Sensing, 5, 2093–2112.

Chen Y, Li X B, Su W, Li Y. 2008. Simulating the optimal land-use pattern in the farming-pastoral transitional zone of Northern China. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 32, 407–414.

Dong J W, Tao F L, Zhang G L. 2011. Trends and variation in vegetation greenness related to geographic controls in middle and eastern Inner Mongolia, China. Environment Earth Science, 62, 245–256.

Dong M Y, Jiang Y, Ren F P, Wu Z F. 2010. Variation trend and catastrophe change of air temperature in the farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China during recent 50 years. Journal of Desert Research, 30, 926–932.

Dong T T, Zhang Z X, Qian F K. 2007. Dynamic change monitoring of cultivated land in a typical farming-pastoral ecotone in Northern China by remote sensing. Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering, 23, 78–82.

Ford J D, Pearce T. 2010. What we know, do not know, and need to know about climate change vulnerability in the western Canadian arctic: A systematic literature review. Environmental Research Letters, 5, 75–82.

Friedl M A, Mciver D K, Hodges J C F, Zhang X Y, Muchoney D, Strahler A H, Woodcock C E, Gopal S, Schneider A, Cooper A, Baccini A, Gao F, Schaaf C. 2002. Global land cover mapping from MODIS: Algorithms and early results. Remote Sensing of Environment, 83, 287–302.

Gong D Y, Han H. 2004. Extreme climate events in Northern China over the last 50 years. Acta Geographica Sinica, 59, 230–238.

Griffith J A, Martinko E A, Price K P. 2000. Landscape structure analysis of Kansas at three scales. Landscape and Urban Planning, 52, 45–61.

Higginbottom T P, Symeonakis E. 2014. Assessing land degradation and desertification using vegetation index data: Current frameworks and future directions. Remote Sensing, 6, 9552–9575.

Huete A, Didan K, Leeuwen W, Miura T, Glenn E. 2011. MODIS vegetation indices. In: Ramachandran B, Justice C O, Abrams M J, eds., Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change. vol. 11. Springer, New York. pp. 579–602.

John R, Chen J, Lu N, Wilske B. 2009. Land cover/land use change in semi-arid inner mongolia: 1992–2004. Environmental Research Letters, 4, 549–567.

Karnieli A, Qin Z H, Wu B, Panov N, Yan F. 2014. Spatio-temporal dynamics of land-use and land-cover in the Mu Us sandy land, China, using the change vector analysis technique. Remote Sensing, 6, 9316–9339.

Kent M, Gill W J, Weaver R E, Armitage R P. 1997. Landscape and plant community boundaries in biogeography. Progress in Physical Geography, 21, 315–353.

Kim Y, Kimball J S, Didan K, Henebry G M. 2014. Responses of vegetation growth and productivity to spring climate indicators in the conterminous United States derived from satellite remote sensing data fusion. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 194, 132–143.

Klaric M N, Anderson B, Shyu C R. 2012. Information mining from human visual reasoning about multi-temporal, high-resolution satellite imagery. International Journal of Image and Data Fusion, 3, 243–256.

Li L, Friedl M A, Xin Q C, Gray J, Pan Y Z, Frolking S. 2014. Mapping crop cycles in China using MODIS-EVI time series. Remote Sensing, 6, 2473–2493.

Liu J H, Gao J X, Lv S H, Han Y W, Nie Y H. 2011. Shifting farming - pastoral ecotone in China under climate and land use changes. Journal of Arid Environments, 75, 298–308.

Masek J G, Vermote E F, Saleous N E, Wolfe R, Hall F G, Huemmrich K F, Gao F, Kutler J, Lim T K. 2006. A Landsat surface reflectance dataset for North America, 1990–2000. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 3, 68–72.

Mu Q Z, Zhao M S, Kimball J S, McDowell N G, Running S W. 2013. A remotely sensed global terrestrial drought severity index. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 94, 83–98.

Parida B R, Buermann W. 2014. Increasing summer drying in North American ecosystems in response to longer nonfrozen periods. Geophysical Research Letters, 41, 5476–5483.

Poyatos R, Latron J, Llorens P. 2003. Land use and land cover change after agricultural abandonment: The case of a Mediterranean mountain area (Catalan Pre-Pyrenees). Mountain Research and Development, 23, 362–368.

Richardson A D, Keenan T F, Migliavacca M, Ryu Y, Sonnentag O, Toomey M. 2013. Climate change, phenology, and phenological control of vegetation feedbacks to the climate system. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 169, 156–173.

Rudel T K, Coomes O T, Moran E, Achard F, Angelsen A, Xu J, CLambin E. 2005. Forest transitions: Towards a global understanding of land use change. Global Environmental Change, 15, 23–31.

Sankey J B, Munson S M, Webb R H, Wallace C S A, Duran C M. 2015. Remote sensing of Sonoran Desert vegetation structure and phenology with ground-based LiDAR. Remote Sensing, 7, 342–359.

Sellers P, Hall F, Margolis H, Kelly B, Baldocchi D, den Hartog G, Cihlar J, Ryan M G, Goodison B, Crill P, Ranson K J, Lettenmaier D, Wickland D E. 1995. The boreal ecosystem-atmosphere study (BOREAS): An overview and early results from the 1994 field year. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 76, 1549–1577.

Shalaby A, Tateishi R. 2007. Remote sensing and GIS for mapping and monitoring land cover and land-use changes in the Northwestern coastal zone of Egypt. Applied Geography, 27, 28–41.

Tao F L, Zhang Z. 2010. Dynamic responses of terrestrial ecosystems structure and function to climate change in China. Journal of Geophysical Research (Biogeosciences), 115(G3), 58–72.

Tao F L, Zhang Z, Xiao D P, Zhang S, Rötter R P, Shi W J, Liu Y J, Wang M, Liu F S, Zhang H, Zhao H L, Zhao X Y, Zhang T H, Zhou R L. 2014. Responses of wheat growth and yield to climate change in different climate zones of China, 1981–2009. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 189, 91–104.

Zhang W B, Liu B Y. 2003. Spatial distribution of precipitation extremum in the ecotone between agriculture and animal husbandry in northern China. Journal of Natural Resources, 18, 274–280.

Zhang X Y, Friedl M A, Schaaf C B, Strahler A H, Schneider A. 2004. The footprint of urban climates on vegetation phenology. Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L12209.

Zhao H L, Zhao X Y, Zhang T H, Zhou R L. 2002. Boundary line on agro-pasture zig zag zone in north China and its problems on eco-environment. Advances in Earth Science, 17, 739–747.
[1] XU Xin-peng, HE Ping, CHUAN Li-min, LIU Xiao-yan, LIU Ying-xia, ZHANG Jia-jia, HUANG Xiao-meng, QIU Shao-jun, ZHAO Shi-cheng, ZHOU Wei. Regional distribution of wheat yield and chemical fertilizer requirements in China[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2021, 20(10): 2772-2780.
[2] ZHANG Xi-wang, LIU Jian-feng, Zhenyue Qin, QIN Fen . Winter wheat identification by integrating spectral and temporal information derived from multi-resolution remote sensing data[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2019, 18(11): 2628-2643.
[3] WANG Qian-feng, TANG Jia, ZENG Jing-yu, QU Yan-ping, ZHANG Qing, SHUI Wei, WANG Wu-lin, YI Lin, LENG Song. Spatial-temporal evolution of vegetation evapotranspiration in Hebei Province, China[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2018, 17(09): 2107-2117.
[4] ZHANG Gan-lin, LIU Feng, SONG Xiao-dong. Recent progress and future prospect of digital soil mapping: A review[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2017, 16(12): 2871-2885.
[5] ZHANG Shi-yuan, ZHANG Xiao-hu, QIU Xiao-lei, TANG Liang, ZHU Yan, CAO Wei-xing, LIU Lei-lei. Quantifying the spatial variation in the potential productivity and yield gap of winter wheat in China[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2017, 16(04): 845-857.
[6] CAO Xiang-hui, LONG Huai-yu, LEI Qiu-liang, LIU Jian, ZHANG Ji-zong, ZHANG Wen-ju, WU Shu-xia. Spatio-temporal variations in organic carbon density and carbon sequestration potential in the topsoil of Hebei Province, China[J]. >Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 2016, 15(11): 2627-2638.
No Suggested Reading articles found!