Spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanisms of vegetation in the Yellow River Basin, China during 2000–2020

To understand the spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanisms of vegetation in the Yellow River Basin, as well as to promote regional ecological construction, we used MODIS NDVI data as the vegetation growth indicator, and the methods of Theil-Sen slope statistics, Mann-Kendall, GeoDetector, correlation analysis, and residual trend analysis. The results show that the spatial distribution of NDVI grows stepwise from northwest to southeast, leached soil with high organic matter content and weak water erosion can make vegetation grow better. The growing season average NDVI is a fluctuating upward trend of 0.005/a during 2000–2020, areas with obviously improved vegetation mainly distributed in the Qinling Mountains, the Northern Shaanxi Plateau, and the Lvliang Mountains in the basin. The partial correlation coefficients of NDVI with precipitation and temperature are 0.57 and 0.53, respectively, and the impact of precipitation on vegetation is higher than temperature. The areas where human activities increase vegetation rapidly are mainly distributed in the northern Shaanxi Plateau, the Lvliang Mountains, and southern Ningxia. The areas where human activities decrease vegetation growth are mainly distributed in cities with strong human activities such as Yinchuan, Baotou, Xi'an, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, and Taiyuan. Human activities and climate change contribute 66% and 34% of the vegetation change respectively in the YRB.