Increasing Impact of Precipitation on Alpine-Grassland Productivity over Last Two Decades on the Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Understanding the importance of temperature and precipitation on plant productivity is beneficial, to reveal the potential impact of climate change on vegetation growth. Although some studies have quantified the response of vegetation productivity to climate change at local, regional, and global scales, changes in climatic constraints on vegetation productivity over time are not well understood. This study combines the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and the net primary production (NPP) modeled by CASA during the plant-growing season, to quantify the interplay of climatic (growing-season temperature and precipitation, GST and GSP) constraints on alpine-grassland productivity on the Tibetan Plateau, as well as the temporal dynamics of these constraints. The results showed that (1) 42.2% and 36.3% of grassland NDVI and NPP on the Tibetan Plateau increased significantly from 2000 to 2019. GSP controlled grassland growth in dryland regions, while humid grasslands were controlled by the GST. (2) The response strength of the NDVI and NPP to precipitation (partial correlation coefficient RNDVI-GSP and RNPP-GSP) increased substantially between 2000 and 2019. Especially, the RNDVI-GSP and RNPP-GSP increased from 0.14 and 0.01 in the first 10year period (2000–2009) to 0.83 and 0.78 in the second 10-year period (2010–2019), respectively. As a result, the controlling factor for alpine-grassland productivity variations shifted from temperature during 2000–2009 to precipitation during 2010–2019. (3) The increase in precipitation constraints was mainly distributed in dryland regions of the plateau. This study highlights that the climatic constraints on alpine-grassland productivity might change under ongoing climate change, which helps the understanding of the ecological responses and helps predict how vegetation productivity changes in the future.