Data-Driven Artificial Intelligence Model of Meteorological Elements Influence on Vegetation Coverage in North China

Based on remote sensing data of vegetation coverage, observation data of basic meteorological elements, and support vector machine (SVM) method, this study develops an analysis model of meteorological elements influence on vegetation coverage (MEVC). The variations for the vegetation coverage changes are identified utilizing five meteorological elements (temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, sunshine hour, and ground temperature) in the SVM model. The performance of the SVM model is also evaluated on simulating vegetation coverage anomaly change by comparing with statistical model multiple linear regression (MLR) and partial least squares (PLS)-based models. The symbol agreement rates (SAR) of simulations produced by MLR, PLS, and SVM models are 55%, 57%, and 66%, respectively. The SVM model shows obviously better performance than PLS and MLR models in simulating meteorological elements-related interannual variation of vegetation coverage in North China. Therefore, the introduction of the intelligent analysis method in term of SVM in model development has certain advantages in studying the internal impact of meteorological elements on regional vegetation coverage. It can also be further applied to predict the future vegetation anomaly change.