SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL CHANGES OF VEGETATION COVER IN CHINA BASED ON MODIS NDVI

Vegetation in China experienced serious threat from several driving forces such as population growth and anthropogenic activities. Real-time mapping and assessment of yearly vegetation cover is vital to understand environmental conditions. Here, we examined the trend of vegetation cover changes in China over a 15-year period using remote sensed data. To achieve this, we reclassified the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values into four classes: No, Low, Medium, and High covers and proceeded to vegetation change detection. The results indicated a difference in values at each level. At the national level, there is an increase in vegetation cover as reflected by High cover class with 41.03% in 2015. At the regional level, the most significant changes were determined in the south where the rate of green cover was declining by -63622.3 km(2) from 2000 to 2015 in the High cover class. Vegetation cover changes varied from province to province. Some provinces showed a reduction in vegetation cover such as Guangdong; whereas Xinjiang experienced an increase (Tables A1 and A2). The findings of this study provide further information on China?s vegetation cover and will also serve as reference for future research.