Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

The influence of temperature and precipitation on the vegetation dynamics of the tropical island of Hainan

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Theoretical and Applied Climatology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Understanding how terrestrial ecosystems respond to climate change can help achieve regional sustainability. The normalized difference vegetation Index (NDVI), which is an important vegetation parameter and ecological index, can directly reflect changes in the ecological environment. Based on meteorological observation data and NDVI monitoring data from 2000 to 2018, we explore the impact of climate change on vegetation on Hainan Island. Firstly, by using Mann–Kendall trend detection together with correlation and partial correlation analysis, we analyze the spatial patterns and trends of the NDVI, annual average temperature, and annual precipitation at grid level and also investigate the spatial relationship between the climatic factors and vegetation. The results show that (1) the ecological conditions on Hainan Island are good and the vegetation trends are positive; (2) the air temperature of Hainan Island has a strong positive effect on the NDVI; and (3) precipitation prevents vegetation growth in the rainy season especially in the central parts of the island. This study focuses on the spatiotemporal characteristics and evolution of vegetation and the influence of climate change on vegetation. Our study provides a scientific basis for achieving regional ecologically sustainable development and valuable evidence related to the impact of climate change on vegetation in tropical island regions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Achour H, Toujani A, Rzigui T, Faïz S (2018) Forest cover in Tunisia before and after the 2011 Tunisian revolution: a spatial analysis approach. J Geovis Spat Anal 2:10

    Google Scholar 

  • An Y, Gao W, Gao Z, Liu C, Shi R (2015) Trend analysis for evaluating the consistency of Terra MODIS and SPOT VGT NDVI time series products in China. Front Earth Sci 9:125–136

    Google Scholar 

  • Andujar E, Krakauer NY, Yi C, Kogan F (2017) Ecosystem drought response timescales from thermal emission versus shortwave remote sensing. Adv Meteorol 2017:1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Anwar SA (2019) Understanding the contribution of the vegetation-runoff system for simulating the African climate using the RegCM4 model. Theor Appl Climatol 138:1219–1230

    Google Scholar 

  • Berge-Nguyen M, Cretaux J-F (2015) Inundations in the Inner Niger Delta: monitoring and analysis using MODIS and global precipitation datasets. Remote Sens 7:2127–2151

    Google Scholar 

  • Bianchi E, Villalba R, Solarte A (2020) NDVI Spatio-temporal patterns and climatic controls over northern Patagonia. Ecosystems 23:84–97

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen Y, Zhang Z, Tao FL, Palosuo T, Rotter RP (2018) Impacts of heat stress on leaf area index and growth duration of winter wheat in the North China Plain. Field Crop Res 222:230–237

    Google Scholar 

  • Deng HJ, Chen YN (2017) Influences of recent climate change and human activities on water storage variations in Central Asia. J Hydrol 544:46–57

    Google Scholar 

  • Deng FP, Su GL, Liu C (2007) Seasonal variation of MODIS vegetation indexes and their statistical relationship with climate over the subtropic evergreen forest in Zhejiang, China. IEEE Geosci Remote Sens Lett 4:236–240

    Google Scholar 

  • Deng HJ, Pepin NC, Chen YN (2017) Changes of snowfall under warming in the Tibetan Plateau. J Geophys Res Atmos 122:7323–7341

    Google Scholar 

  • El-Shirbeny MA, Aboelghar MA, Arafat SM, El-Gindy AGM (2014) Assessment of the mutual impact between climate and vegetation cover using NOAA-AVHRR and Landsat data in Egypt. Arab J Geosci 7:1287–1296

    Google Scholar 

  • Faramarzi M, Heidarizadi Z, Mohamadi A, Heydari M (2018) Detection of vegetation changes in relation to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in semi-arid rangeland in Western Iran. J Agric Sci Technol 20:51–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Fibbi L, Moriondo M, Chiesi M, Bindi M, Maselli F (2019) Impacts of climate change on the gross primary production of Italian forests. Ann For Sci 76:13

    Google Scholar 

  • Filonchyk M, Hurynovich V (2020) Validation of MODIS aerosol products with AERONET measurements of different land cover types in areas over Eastern Europe and China. J Geovis Spat Anal 4:10

    Google Scholar 

  • Henderson-Sellers A, Gornitz V (1984) Possible climatic impacts of land cover transformations, with particular emphasis on tropical deforestation. Clim Chang 6:231–257

    Google Scholar 

  • Hilker T, Lyapustin AI, Hall FG, Myneni R, Knyazikhin Y, Wang Y, Tucker CJ, Sellers PJ (2015) On the measurability of change in Amazon vegetation from MODIS. Remote Sens Environ 166:233–242

    Google Scholar 

  • Huete AR, Didan K, Shimabukuro YE, Ratana P, Saleska SR, Hutyra LR, Yang WZ, Nemani RR, Myneni R (2006) Amazon rainforests green-up with sunlight in dry season. Geophys Res Lett 33:4

    Google Scholar 

  • Kendall MG (1990) Rank correlation methods. Br J Psychol 25:86–91

    Google Scholar 

  • Kicklighter DW, Cai Y, Zhuang Q, Parfenova EI, Paltsev S, Sokolov AP, Melillo JM, Reilly JM, Tchebakova NM, Lu X (2014) Potential influence of climate-induced vegetation shifts on future land use and associated land carbon fluxes in Northern Eurasia. Environ Res Lett 9:14

    Google Scholar 

  • Kundzewicz ZW, Giannakopoulos C, Schwarb M, Stjernquist I, Schlyter P, Szwed M, Palutikof J (2008) Impacts of climate extremes on activity sectors – stakeholders’ perspective. Theor Appl Climatol 93:117–132

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann HB (1945) Nonparametric Tests Against Trend. Econometrica 13:245–259

    Google Scholar 

  • Mao DH, Wang ZM, Luo L, Ren CY (2012) Integrating AVHRR and MODIS data to monitor NDVI changes and their relationships with climatic parameters in Northeast China. Int J Appl Earth Obs Geoinf 18:528–536

    Google Scholar 

  • Merabti A, Meddi M, Martins DS, Pereira LS (2018) Comparing SPI and RDI applied at local scale as influenced by climate. Water Resour Manag 32:1071–1085

    Google Scholar 

  • Mu S, Yang H, Li J, Chen Y, Gang C, Zhou W, Ju W (2013) Spatio-temporal dynamics of vegetation coverage and its relationship with climate factors in Inner Mongolia, China. J Geogr Sci 23:231–246

    Google Scholar 

  • Munyati C, Ratshibvumo T (2011) Characterising vegetation cover in relation to land use in the Inkomati catchment, South Africa, using Landsat imagery. Area 43:189–201

    Google Scholar 

  • Nourani V, Mehr AD, Azad N (2018) Trend analysis of hydroclimatological variables in Urmia lake basin using hybrid wavelet Mann-Kendall and Sen tests. Environ Earth Sci 77:207

    Google Scholar 

  • Olmos-Trujillo E, Gonzalez-Trinidad J, Junez-Ferreira H, Pacheco-Guerrero A, Bautista-Capetillo C, Avila-Sandoval C, Galvan-Tejada E (2020) Spatio-temporal response of vegetation indices to rainfall and temperature in a semiarid region. Sustainability 12:18

    Google Scholar 

  • Pockman WT, Small EE (2010) The influence of spatial patterns of soil moisture on the grass and shrub responses to a summer rainstorm in a Chihuahuan desert ecotone. Ecosystems 13:511–525

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawat S, Gupta AK, Sangode SJ, Srivastava P, Nainwal HC (2015) Late Pleistocene-Holocene vegetation and Indian summer monsoon record from the Lahaul, Northwest Himalaya, India. Quat Sci Rev 114:167–181

    Google Scholar 

  • Rego JCL, Soares-Gomes A, da Silva FS (2018) Loss of vegetation cover in a tropical island of the Amazon coastal zone (Maranhao Island, Brazil). Land Use Policy 71:593–601

    Google Scholar 

  • Reis C, Lopes A (2019) Evaluating the cooling potential of urban green spaces to tackle urban climate change in Lisbon. Sustainability 11:17

    Google Scholar 

  • Roshan G, Oji R, Al-Yahyai S (2014) Impact of climate change on the wheat-growing season over Iran. Arab J Geosci 7:3217–3226

    Google Scholar 

  • Sebastian DE, Ganguly S, Krishnaswamy J, Duffy K, Nemani R, Ghosh S (2019) Multi-scale association between vegetation growth and climate in India: a wavelet analysis approach. Remote Sens 11:18

    Google Scholar 

  • Small EE, Larson KM, Braun JJ (2010) Sensing vegetation growth with reflected GPS signals. Geophys Res Lett 37:5

    Google Scholar 

  • Sun SS, Wang GL (2014) Climate variability attributable to terrestrial and oceanic forcing in the NCAR CAM3-CLM3 Models. Clim Dyn 42:2067–2078

    Google Scholar 

  • Tang J, Zeng JY, Zhang L, Zhang RR, Li JH, Li XG, Zou J, Zeng Y, Xu ZH, Wang QF, Zhang Q (2020) A modified flexible spatiotemporal data fusion model. Front Earth Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-019-0800-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tang J, Zeng JY, Zhang Q, Zhang RR, Leng S, Zeng Y, Shui W, Xu ZH, Wang QF (2020b) Self-adapting extraction of cropland phenological transitions of rotation agroecosystems using dynamically fused NDVI images. Int J Biometeorol 64:1273–1283

    Google Scholar 

  • Tosunoglu F, Kisi O (2017) Trend analysis of maximum hydrologic drought variables using Mann-Kendall and Sen’s innovative trend method. River Res Appl 33:597–610

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang JY, Liu YS (2013) Tourism-led land-use changes and their environmental effects in the southern coastal region of Hainan Island, China. J Coast Res 29:1118–1125

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang HB, Ma MG (2016) Impacts of climate change and anthropogenic activities on the ecological restoration of wetlands in the arid regions of China. Energies 9:25

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Wu JJ, Lei TJ, He B, Wu ZT, Liu M, Mo XY, Geng GP, Li XH, Zhou HK, Liu DC (2014) Temporal-spatial characteristics of severe drought events and their impact on agriculture on a global scale. Quat Int 349:10–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Shi PJ, Lei TJ, Geng GP, Liu JH, Mo XY, Li XH, Zhou HK, Wu JJ (2015) The alleviating trend of drought in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China based on the daily SPEI. Int J Climatol 35:3760–3769

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Tang J, Zeng JY, Qu YP, Zhang Q, Shui W, Wang WL, Yi L, Leng S (2018a) Spatial-temporal evolution of vegetation evapotranspiration in Hebei Province, China. J Integr Agric 17:2107–2117

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Zeng JY, Leng S, Fan BX, Tang J, Jiang C, Huang Y, Zhang Q, Qu YP, Wang WL, Shui W (2018b) The effects of air temperature and precipitation on the net primary productivity in China during the early 21st century. Front Earth Sci 12:818–833

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang XH, Ciais P, Wang YL, Zhu D (2018c) Divergent response of seasonally dry tropical vegetation to climatic variations in dry and wet seasons. Glob Chang Biol 24:4709–4717

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang HB, Li X, Ma MG, Geng LY (2019a) Improving estimation of gross primary production in dryland ecosystems by a model-data fusion approach. Remote Sens 11:22

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang ZM, Ye W, Xing FW (2019b) Bryophyte diversity on a tropical continental island (Hainan, China): potential vulnerable species and environmental indicators. J Bryol 41:350–360

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Qi JY, Li J, Cole J, Waldhoff ST, Zhang XS (2020a) Nitrate loading projection is sensitive to freeze-thaw cycle representation. Water Res 186:116355–116355

    Google Scholar 

  • Wang QF, Qi JY, Wu H, Zeng Y, Shui W, Zeng JY, Zhang XS (2020b) Freeze-thaw cycle representation alters response of watershed hydrology to future climate change. Catena 195:104767

    Google Scholar 

  • Wen J, Lai X, Shi X, Pan X (2013) Numerical simulations of fractional vegetation coverage influences on the convective environment over the source region of the Yellow River. Meteorog Atmos Phys 120:1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu ZT, Wang MY, Zhang H, Du ZQ (2019a) Vegetation and soil wind erosion dynamics of sandstorm control programs in the agro-pastoral transitional zone of northern China. Front Earth Sci 13:430–443

    Google Scholar 

  • Wu ZT, Yu L, Zhang XY, Du ZQ, Zhang H (2019b) Satellite-based large-scale vegetation dynamics in ecological restoration programmes of Northern China. Int J Remote Sens 40:2296–2312

    Google Scholar 

  • Xiong CH, Chen S, Huang R (2019) Extended STIRPAT model-based driving factor analysis of energy-related CO2 emissions in Kazakhstan. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26:15920–15930

    Google Scholar 

  • Xu HJ, Wang XP, Zhang XX (2017) Impacts of climate change and human activities on the aboveground production in alpine grasslands: a case study of the source region of the Yellow River. China. Arab J Geosci 10:17

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang X, Xie X, Liu DL, Ji F, Wang L (2015) Spatial interpolation of daily rainfall data for local climate impact assessment over greater Sydney Region. Adv Meteorol 2015:563629

    Google Scholar 

  • Yao JQ, Chen YN, Zhao Y, Mao WY, Xu XB, Liu Y, Yang Q (2018) Response of vegetation NDVI to climatic extremes in the arid region of Central Asia: a case study in Xinjiang, China. Theor Appl Climatol 131:1503–1515

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeng JY, Zhang RR, Lin YH, Wu XP, Tang J, Guo PC, Li JH, Wang QF (2020a) Drought frequency characteristics of China, 1981-2019, based on the vegetation health index. Clim Res 81:131–147

    Google Scholar 

  • Zeng JY, Zhang RR, Tang J, Liang JC, Li JH, Zeng Y, Li YF, Zhang Q, Shui W, Wang QF (2020) Ecological sustainability assessment of the carbon footprint in Fujian Province, southeast China. Front Earth Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-020-0815-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Yu GQ, Li ZB, Li P (2014) Experimental study on slope runoff, erosion and sediment under different vegetation types. Water Resour Manag 28:2415–2433

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang Z, Song X, Chen Y, Wang P, Wei X, Tao FL (2015) Dynamic variability of the heading-flowering stages of single rice in China based on field observations and NDVI estimations. Int J Biometeorol 59:643–655

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang W, Wang J, Xu L, Wang A, Huang L, Du H, Qiu L, Oelmueller R (2018) Drought stress responses in maize are diminished by Piriformospora indica. Plant Signal Behav 13

Download references

Acknowledgment

We appreciate Xiaomei Li and Xuemei Li’s projects for supporting this work.

Funding

This research received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41801004, No.41761014, No.41601562), also sponsored by China Scholarship Council (201806655014), the Research Project for Yong Teachers of Fujian Province (No.JAT160085), the Scientific Research Foundation of Fuzhou University (No.XRC-1536), the and Hainan Key Research and Development Project (ZDYF2018171).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Ecology & Environment, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

    Pengcheng Guo

  2. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Pengcheng Guo

  3. Hainan Guowei Eco Environmental Co., Ltd., Haikou, 570203, China

    Pengcheng Guo & Xin Zhao

  4. Guangxi Scientific Experimental Centre for Mining, Metallurgy and Environment, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin, 541004, China

    Xin Zhao

  5. Hainan Academy Research of Environmental Sciences, Haikou, 571126, China

    Jiankang Shi

  6. Fujian Radiation Environment Supervision Station, Fuzhou, 350013, China

    Jucong Huang

  7. College of Environment and Resource, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou, 350116, China

    Jia Tang, Rongrong Zhang, Qianfeng Wang & Jingyu Zeng

  8. Fujian Academy of Environmental Sciences, Fuzhou, 350012, China

    Jin Chen

Authors
  1. Pengcheng Guo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Xin Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Jiankang Shi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jucong Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jia Tang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Rongrong Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Jin Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Qianfeng Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Jingyu Zeng
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jingyu Zeng.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Highlights

• For tropical islands, the air temperature has a significant impact on vegetation.

• The impact of climatic factors on vegetation is different in the dry and wet seasons.

• Increased precipitation in tropical island areas in the wet season may prevent vegetation growth.

• Our findings can help with understanding the characteristics of the response of tropical island vegetation to precipitation and air temperature.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Guo, P., Zhao, X., Shi, J. et al. The influence of temperature and precipitation on the vegetation dynamics of the tropical island of Hainan. Theor Appl Climatol 143, 429–445 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03430-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-020-03430-x

Search

Navigation