Ecological response to the climate change on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains in Xinjiang

The Tianshan Mountains is a high and huge mountain body lying across the central part of Xinjiang, China, and is also the main area where the runoff forms in Xinjiang. In this paper, a set of RS-based study methods is put forward for deriving the information about the natural change of the ecology in arid areas, and the relationship between the climate change trend and the corresponding ecological response on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years is analyzed from the scales of the land cover ecosystems and landscapes based on the observed data of climate, hydrology, modern glaciers and lakes on the northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years and the satellite RS data since recent 10 years by using the RS and GIS technologies. The results are as follows: (1) The overall trend of climate change on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains since recent 40 years is that both air temperature and precipitation are increased, especially the increase amplitudes of air temperature, precipitation and annual runoff volume are high since the decade of the 1990s; (2) the integrated indexes of the vegetation in all the geographical divisions on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains are obviously increased since recent 10 years, especially in the artificial oases and the foothill belts, such a change trend is advantageous for improving the vegetation ecology; and (3) the vegetation ecology in the arid areas is extremely sensitive to the climate change, the vegetation coverage and the biomass on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains are continuously increased because of the climate change since recent 10 years, their increase amplitudes in the plains and during the late stage are obviously higher than that in the mountainous regions and during the early stage.

[1]  Bruce K. Wylie,et al.  Satellite and ground-based pasture production assessment in Niger: 1986-1988 , 1991 .

[2]  Zhou Kefa,et al.  Temporal and spatial variation and stability of the oasis in the Sangong River Watershed, Xinjiang, China , 2003 .

[3]  Hu Ru,et al.  ANALYSIS ON THE CHANGING CAUSES OF THE LAKES IN THE BASINS AND THE PLAINS IN XINJIANG SINCE RECENT YEARS , 2001 .

[4]  J. Randerson,et al.  Global net primary production: Combining ecology and remote sensing , 1995 .

[5]  Xia Li,et al.  Sensitivity of terrestrial ecosystem to global change in China , 1997 .

[6]  A. Huete A soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI) , 1988 .

[7]  Li Yu Study on Hydrological Features of the Kaidu River and the Bosten Lake in the Second Half of 20th Century , 2003 .

[8]  Shi Yafeng,et al.  FLUCTUATIONS AND FUTURE TREND OF CLIMATE, GLACIERS AND DISCHARGE OF URUMQI RIVER IN XINJIANG , 1990 .

[9]  A. McGuire,et al.  Global climate change and terrestrial net primary production , 1993, Nature.

[10]  T. Hobbs,et al.  The use of NOAA-AVHRR NDVI data to assess herbage production in the arid rangelands of Central Australia , 1995 .

[11]  Jean-Philippe Gastellu-Etchegorry,et al.  Relating the Global Vegetation Index to net primary productivity and actual evapotranspiration over Africa , 1993 .

[12]  Yang Xiao THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OASES EVOLUTION AND NATURAL AS WELL AS HUMAN FACTORS—? VIDENCES FROM THE LOWER REACHES OF THE KERIYA RIVER, SOUTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA , 2001 .

[13]  Wang Qian Analysis on Causes of the Water Level Variation of Ebinur Lake in Recent 50 Years , 2003 .

[14]  J. Paruelo,et al.  ANPP ESTIMATES FROM NDVI FOR THE CENTRAL GRASSLAND REGION OF THE UNITED STATES , 1997 .

[15]  Shi Ya,et al.  Preliminary Study on Signal, Impact and Foreground of Climatic Shift from Warm-Dry to Warm-Humid in Northwest China , 2002 .

[16]  Craig Loehle,et al.  Model-based assessments of climate change effects on forests , 1995 .

[17]  S. Prince Satellite remote sensing of primary production: comparison of results for Sahelian grasslands 1981-1988 , 1991 .