On the variation of NDVI with the principal climatic elements in the tibetan plateau

Abstract

Temperature and precipitation have been separately reported to be the mainfactors affecting the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) in the TibetanPlateau. The effects of the main climatic factors on the yearly maximum NDVI (MNDVI)in the Tibetan Plateau were examined on different scales. The result underscored theobservation that both precipitation and temperature affect MNDVI based on weatherstations or physico-geographical regions. Precipitation is the main climatic factor thataffects the vegetation cover in the entire Tibetan Plateau. Both annual mean precipitationand annual mean precipitation of the growing period are related with MNDVI, and thepositive correlations are manifested in a linear manner. By comparison, the weaklycorrelated current between MNDVI and all the temperature indexes is observed in thestudy area. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.