Response of Vegetation Coverage to Climate Change in the Loess Plateau in 1982-2006

This paper studied vegetation coverage variations and the response of vegetation change to climate change in Loess Plateau in order to provide the reference for improving the regional ecological environment based on the data from GIMMS AVHRR NDVI of China from 1982 to 2006and the data of precipitation and temperature from 82 weather stations interpolated by GIS 9.3and spline interpolating method from ANUSPLIN 4.3software.The results show that:(1)the Loess Plateau has a low vegetation coverage,which is only38%,and vegetation coverage was obviously different in different regions,the value in southeast is high,while in northwest is low;(2)for almost 25 years,the vegetation activity of the Loess Plateau had been enhanced in a relatively stable situation,and vegetation coverage had increased by 0.75%/10 a,under this changing trend,the area of the vegetation coverage kept almost unchanged by 40.6% which tended to the improved vegetation coverage areas(42%)and was greater than the degradation area(17.4%);(3)In Loess Plateau,the annual precipitation has showed a decreasing trend indistinctively by 1.9mm/a and the annual temperature has showed an increasing trend markedly by 0.7℃/10 aduring 25years.The climate has be-come warm and dry;(4)the correlation analysis between vegetation coverage and annual precipitation and temperature was obviously different in different regions which is an extremely significant positive correlation,but there is an obvious difference in space.The vegetation growth is sensitive to precipitation.