Monitoring vegetation greenness variations in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with MODIS vegetation index

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is one of the most sensitive and fragile regions to climate changes, which has been found experiencing distinct warming trend in recent decades. We detected the vegetation greenness trends with the MODIS data in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during 2000-2009. The annual average normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) increased 0.036 yr-1in this region. Statistically significant increasing trend appeared in about 20% of the vegetated area, primarily in the northeastern Plateau. Only 4% of the study region, mostly in the southern Plateau, showed significant decreasing NDVI trend.