Ecological response to the climate change on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang

The Tianshan Mountains is a high and huge mountain body lying across the central part of Xinjiang, China, and is also the main area where the runoff forms in Xinjiang. In this paper, a set of RS-based study methods is put forward for deriving the information about the natural change of the ecology in arid areas, and the relationship between the climate change trend and the corresponding ecological response on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years is analyzed from the scales of the land cover ecosystems and landscapes based on the observed data of climate, hydrology, modern glaciers and lakes on the northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years and the satellite RS data since recent 10 years by using the RS and GIS technologies. The results are as follows: (1) The overall trend of climate change on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years is that both air temperature and precipitation are increased, especially the increase amplitudes of air temperature, precipitation and annual runoff volume are high since the decade of the 1990s; (2) the integrated indexes of the vegetation in all the geographical divisions on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains are obviously increased since recent 10 years, especially in the artificial oases and the foothill belts, such a change trend is advantageous for improving the vegetation ecology; and (3) the vegetation ecology in the arid areas is extremely sensitive to the climate change, the vegetation coverage and the biomass on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains are continuously increased because of the climate change since recent 10 years, their increase amplitudes in the plains and during the late stage are obviously higher than that in the mountainous regions and during the early stage.