The ongoing greening in southwest China despite severe droughts and drying trends

Abstract

Vegetation greening, which refers to the interannual increasing trends of vegetation greenness, has been widely found on the regional to global scale. Meanwhile, climate extremes, especially several drought, significantly damage vegetation. The Southwest China (SWC) region experienced massive drought from 2009 to 2012, which severely damaged vegetation and had a huge impact on agricultural systems and life. However, whether these extremes have significantly influenced long-term (multiple decades) vegetation change is unclear. Using the latest remote sensing-based records, including leaf area index (LAI) and gross primary productivity (GPP) for 1982–2016 and enhanced vegetation index (EVI) for 2001–2019, drought events of 2009–2012 only leveled off the greening (increasing in vegetation indices and GPP) temporally and long-term greening was maintained. Meanwhile, drying trends were found to unexpectedly coexist with greening.