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Arid Land Geography ›› 2023, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (7): 1111-1120.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2022.545

• Plant Ecology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Responses of vegetation water use efficiency to meteorological factors in arid areas of northwest China: A case of Xinjiang

GAO Xiaoyu1(),HAO Haichao2,3,ZHANG Xueqi1,4,CHEN Yaning4()   

  1. 1. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
    2. School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
    3. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, Ministry of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
    4. State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi 830011, Xinjiang, China
  • Received:2022-10-20 Revised:2022-12-01 Online:2023-07-25 Published:2023-08-03

Abstract:

Water use efficiency (WUE) links the processes of carbon and water cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and is a crucial indicator for understanding the response of vegetated ecosystems to climate change. In this study, the spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation WUE in Xinjiang of China from 1990 to 2020 were systematically analyzed based on the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford approach model inversions of net primary productivity and evapotranspiration (ET). In this method, remote sensing images and reanalysis data products from past 31 years were combined. The results revealed that vegetation WUE in Xinjiang has been decreasing for 31 years and 2003 was a pivotal year with a fluctuating downward trend before the turning point and a subsequent fluctuating upward trend. The spatial pattern of vegetation WUE in Xinjiang has not changed considerably over the past 31 years, with high values concentrated in plains, especially in the oasis and desert-oasis transition zones, and low values concentrated in mountains. The results revealed that the changes in vegetation WUE in Xinjiang can be attributed to the influence of climatic factors such as precipitation, evapotranspiration and water vapor pressure. This study can be used as a reference for screening artificial and natural vegetation structure types with reasonable structure, high water conservation and productivity, and for achieving the sustainable development of vegetation construction in arid and semiarid regions, especially for the ecosystem security and sustainable development of agriculture and animal husbandry in Xinjiang.

Key words: water use efficiency, net primary productivity, evapotranspiration, climate change