The Relationship of Vegetation Phenology and Climate Change in the North-South Transect of Eastern China

In order to explore additional distribution patterns of global change to terrestrial ecosystems, phenology refers to seasonal biological life stages driven by environmental factors, and is considered to be a sensitive and precise indicator of climate change. Therefore, the author developed a 'bottom-up' method for first determining the phenological growing season at sample stations, and based on NOAA/AVVHRR, meteorological data, ground phonology observation data, vegetation category data, and so on. The author built a Logistic fitting model on cumulative frequency of NDVI to determine length of greenness period since 1982, then analyzed correlation between NDVI and precipitation, primarily revealed the dynamic mechanism of climate on vegetation. The spatial pattern of average turning green and wilting dates of the growing season correlated significantly with the spatial pattern of average temperatures in spring and winter across the north south transect of eastern China during 1982 to 2003; the growing season extended on average by 5 to 8 days. Temperate desert regions had the trend of increase of desertification.