Research Article Alpine Cold Vegetation Response to Climate Change in the Western Nyainqentanglha Range in 1972–2009

Copyright © 2014 XuWang et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative CommonsAttribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Tibetan Plateau is regarded as one of the most climatic-sensitive regions all over the world. Long-term remote sensing data enable us to monitor spatial-temporal change in this area. The vegetation changes of the western Nyainqentanglha region were detected by using RS and GIS techniques. And the vegetation coverage was derived by the NDVI-SMA (spectral mixture analysis) methods. An incensement of vegetation was observed in the mountain areas during 1972–2009 with a mean vegetation coverage of 24.87%, 35.89%, and 42.88 % in 30/09/1972, 14/09/1991, and 30/08/2009, respectively. The vegetation fraction increased by 18 % in the period of 1972–2009.The bin with the elevation between 4400 and 5200m had the highest vegetation coverage.This may be the result of the mountain effect. Alpine vegetation had a trend to increase and expand to higher altitudes with the climate change in the past 40 years. The variation appears to be associated with an increase in mean temperature of 0.05∘C per year and an increase in precipitation of 1.83mm per year in the growing season of the past four decades. The results provide further evidence of alpine ecosystem change due to climate change in the central Tibetan Plateau. 1