Quantifying the Influence of Climate Variability on Vegetation Variation from the Perspective of Vegetation Resilience in China

Climate variability has profound effects on vegetation. Many studies have investigated the responses of vegetation to climate change but ignored vegetation resilience and cumulative and lagging impacts. In this study, the spatiotemporal characteristics of vegetation resilience and vegetation variation were investigated at seasonal scales. Further analysis explored the response of vegetation variation to vegetation resilience for different regions. The results showed that the influence of the climate on vegetation shifted with the seasons in China. Temperature was the dominant climatic driver that influenced vegetation dynamics in most regions during spring. Moreover, the sensitivity of vegetation to temperature gradually weakened, and the influence of precipitation and solar radiation increased in summer and autumn. Throughout the growing season, precipitation was the major climatic role that affected vegetation changes in the arid (54.03%) and semi-arid (42.58%) zones, while solar radiation played an important role in the humid zone (40.23%). Vegetation was highly resilient in the humid zone of South China and had a low resilience in the semi-arid zone of North China . Furthermore, with the increase in vegetation coverage and degree of dryness, the amplitude of the increase in resilience gradually increased. Regarding vegetation changes, higher coefficients of variation (CV) values were scattered in the dry areas of West China. In particular, the central region of northern China had high vegetation fluctuations in spatial clustering. We found that vegetation with low resilience tended to change. Significant negative correlations between vegetation variation and vegetation resilience were detected in the semi-arid zone, particularly in summer. In addition, most grasslands that were mainly concentrated on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau had high variation. Vegetation areas with low resilience were likely to be degraded in this region. The vegetation areas with low resilience on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could function as warning signals of vegetation degradation