Climate Change and Diurnal Warming: Impacts on the Growth of Different Vegetation Types in the North–South Transition Zone of China

Li Li, Lianqi Zhu (), Nan Xu, Ying Liang, Zhengyu Zhang, Junjie Liu and Xin Li
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Li Li: School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Lianqi Zhu: College of Geography and Environmental Science, Henan University, Kaifeng 475004, China
Nan Xu: School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China
Ying Liang: School of Government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Zhengyu Zhang: School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Junjie Liu: State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing 100101, China
Xin Li: School of Architecture, Nanyang Institute of Technology, Nanyang 473004, China

Land, 2022, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Since land use/cover change profoundly impacts climate change and global warming has become an irreversible trend in the Anthropocene, there have been numerous global studies on the impact of climate change on vegetation growth (VG). However, the effects of climate extremes on the growth and direction of various vegetation types need to be better investigated, especially in the climate transition zones. In this paper, we examined the effect of diurnal warming on the growth of various types of vegetation in China’s north–south transition zone. Based on the daily observation data of 92 meteorological stations in the Qinling-Daba (Qinba) mountainous area from 1982 to 2015, coupled with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and data on the type of vegetation. This research examined the temporal changes in the highest and lowest temperatures during the last 33 years using trend analysis. Second-order correlation analysis was used to investigate vegetation NDVI response characteristics to diurnal warming and to examine the effect of diurnal warming on the growth of different vegetation types. Our results showed that maximum temperature (T max ) and minimum temperature (T min ) showed an obvious upward trend, with the daytime temperature increase rate 1.2 times that at night, but failing the t -test. In addition, diurnal warming promoted vegetation growth, with NDVI associated positively correlated with T max at approximately 91.2% of the sites and 3492 rasters and with T min at roughly 53.25% of the sites and 2864 rasters. Spatial significance analysis showed an apparent difference, but few areas passed the t -test. Furthermore, daytime warming enhanced the growth of grasses, shrubs, deciduous broad-leaved forests, crops, and conifers, while the effect of nighttime warming on VG had a positive effect only on the growth of evergreen broad-leaved forest vegetation. These findings reveal the mechanisms of the impact of climate extremes on VG under global change, particularly the extent to which different vegetation types in climatic transitional zones respond to climate extremes.

Keywords: climate change; day and night temperature; vegetation NDVI; partial correlation analysis; Qinling-Daba mountains (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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