Inter-monthly Response Characteristics of NDVI to the Variation of Temperature and Precipitation in East China and Its Surrounding Areas

The interaction between vegetation and atmosphere is important in global climate change and natural resource management and has become a research focus of geosciences in recent years.Spatial and temporal response characteristics of NDVI to the variations of temperature and precipitation in East China and its surrounding areas were analyzed based on the SPOT VGT-DN data from Flemish Institute for Technological Research(VITO),Belgium,and monthly temperature and precipitation data from 135 meteorological stations during 1998-2010.The results indicate that in the whole study area,NDVI has the maximum response to the temperature of the same month,and has the maximum response to the precipitation of previous one month.Spatially,the response of NDVI to temperature has no significant difference among the whole study area,and the response of NDVI to precipitation in the northern part is stronger than that in the middle and southern part of the study area.In the middle part of the study area,NDVI synchronously responds to the variation of temperature in the current month,but in the northern and southern part,it responds to the variation of temperature with a lag of about one month.In the northern part of the study area,NDVI generally responds to the variation of precipitation with a lag of about one month,but in the southern part,it responds to the variation of precipitation with a lag of 2 or 3 months.The temporal response characteristics,spatial distribution and the general lag time of the NDVI to temperature and precipitation in East China and its surrounding areas are consistent with other results,but in the southern part,the lag time of NDVI to the variation precipitation is longer than other results.The difference of data source,study area,climate and vegetation type,and soil property may result in the difference between our and other results.