Spatiotemporal Dynamics of NEP and Its Influencing Factors: Exploring the Impact Mechanisms Under Extreme Climate Conditions

Abstract

Highlights: What are the main findings? NEP in Dongying showed an overall increasing but fluctuating trend from 2001 to 2023, with growth momentum weakening after 2017 due to increased extreme climate events. Extreme climate events reduced the positive role of NDVI and enhanced the negative influence of DEM on NEP, further constraining the potential for carbon sequestration since 2017. What is the implication of the main finding? Extreme climate events were a critical driver of NEP changes, highlighting the need to quantify their impacts to support China’s “Dual Carbon” goals. The altered factor contributions underscore the importance of multi-factor synergy under climate extremes, providing key insights for adaptive ecosystem management. Current research on net ecosystem productivity (NEP) still lacks sufficient attention to the impacts of extreme climate events, particularly in understanding the interactive response mechanisms of carbon sinks under extreme climate conditions. This study investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of NEP and its interactive mechanisms in Dongying, China, from 2001 to 2023 under extreme climate conditions. Using trend slope estimation, geographical detector, and XGBoost methods, we systematically revealed the responses of NEP to the factors including climatic changes, human activities, vegetation growth status, and topographic features. The results indicated that NEP exhibited an overall fluctuating yet increasing trend during 2001–2023. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI, for vegetation growth status) and the digital elevation model (DEM, for terrain features) were identified as the dominant factors influencing the spatial heterogeneity of NEP. However, extreme precipitation and high temperature events significantly diminished the positive contribution of the NDVI to NEP, while simultaneously amplifying the negative influence of the DEM on NEP. These two concurrent changes superimposed on each other, especially after 2017, further constrained the potential for carbon sequestration. Furthermore, a lag effect was observed in the response mechanisms of NEP to factors under the influence of precipitation and high-temperature climates. These findings highlight the critical and complex role of extreme climate in reorganizing the contributions of factors and intensifying pressure on the carbon sequestration capacity of ecosystems.