Spatiotemporal Changes of Vegetation Cover in Response to Climate Change on the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau is one of the most important ecological barriers in China. Resolving the internal relations and dynamics ruling the association between regional vegetation and climate change is important to understand and protect the regional ecosystems. Based on vegetation, temperature and precipitation data of the Tibetan Plateau from 2001 to 2010, we analyze the spatial and temporal variations of vegetation cover over the past 10 years and discuss the vegetation response to climate change using empirical orthogonal function and singular value decomposition. Our results reveal the following: (1) vegetation cover gradually decreases from the southeast to the northwest of the Tibetan Plateau; (2) vegetation cover has increased on the Tibetan Plateau over the past 10 years, mainly in the central and eastern zones; and (3) a significant positive relationship was suggested between vegetation cover during growing season and the temperature in the entire region and with precipitation in the central and southern zones.