Diverse Responses of Vegetation Greenness and Productivity to Land Use and Climate Change: A Comparison of Three Urban Agglomerations in China

Fei Xue and Yi’na Hu ()
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Fei Xue: School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
Yi’na Hu: School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 14, 1-14

Abstract: Vegetation plays a crucial role in enhancing residents’ quality of life, especially in densely populated urban areas. However, previous research has rarely explored the inconsistency between vegetation greenness and productivity or its potential factors, leaving the reasons for their inconsistency unclear. Taking the three largest urban agglomerations in China as study areas, this study examined the inconsistency between vegetation greenness (LAI) and productivity (GPP) after detecting their dynamics based on the Mann–Kendall test. Then, the impact of land use change on the observed inconsistency was explored by contrasting the variations in vegetation greenness and productivity between regions with and without land use changes. The effect of climate change was evaluated by the Spearman correlation method at the pixel level. The results showed that both vegetation greenness and productivity exhibited a rising trend in three agglomerations from 2001 to 2020. Notably, an obvious inconsistency existed between greenness and productivity. Regions with a consistent change in greenness and productivity accounted for 69.87% in Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH), while only 45.65% and 42.93% in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD), respectively. Land use change and climate change exerted divergent impacts on greenness and productivity across these agglomerations. The conversion of croplands and grasslands to construction lands had a more severe negative effect on vegetation greenness than on productivity in all regions. However, this transition led to a general decline in both greenness and productivity in the YRD and PRD, whereas in BTH, greenness declined while productivity paradoxically increased. As for climatic factors, the responses of greenness and productivity to rainfall and solar radiation exhibited spatial heterogeneity among the three agglomerations. In the YRD and PRD, they had a negative correlation with rainfall and a positive correlation with solar radiation, whereas in BTH, these correlations were reversed. Our spatial comparative analysis provided insights into the inconsistency between vegetation greenness and productivity as well as their potential reasons, offering a fresh perspective for regional vegetation research.

Keywords: vegetation greenness; vegetation productivity; inconsistency; land use change; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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