Youping Chen

Exploring the evolution of vegetation cover and its drivers in the Ferghana Basin helps to understand the current ecological status of the Ferghana Basin and to analyze the vegetation changes and drivers, with a view to providing a scientific basis for regional ecological and environmental management and planning. Based on GIMMS NDVI3g and meteorological data, the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of NDVI were analyzed from multiple perspectives with the help of linear trend and Mann–Kendall (MK) test methods using arcgis and the R language spatial analysis module, combined with partial correlation coefficients and residual analysis methods to analyze the impacts of climate change and human activities on the regional vegetation cover of the Ferghana Basin from 1982 to 2015. NDVI driving forces. The results showed the following: (1) The growing season of vegetation NDVI in the Ferghana Basin showed an increasing trend in the 34-year period, with an increase rate of 0.0044/10a, and the spatial distribution was significantly different, which was high in the central part of the country and low in the northern and southern parts of the country. (2) Temperature and precipitation simultaneously co-influenced the vegetation NDVI growth season, with most of the temperature and precipitation contributing in the spring, most of the temperature in the summer being negatively phased and the precipitation positively correlated, and most of the temperature and precipitation in the fall inhibiting vegetation NDVI growth. (3) The combined effect of climate change and human activities was the main reason for the overall rapid increase and great spatial variations in vegetation NDVI in China, and the spatial distribution of drivers, namely human activities and climate change, contributed 44.6% to vegetation NDVI in the growing season. The contribution of climate change and human activities to vegetation NDVI in the Ferghana Basin was 62.32% and 93.29%, respectively. The study suggests that more attention should be paid to the role of human activities and climate change in vegetation restoration to inform ecosystem management and green development.

Eastern Xinjiang, as a typical extremely arid area, exhibits a high sensitivity to climate change. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the climatic changes in this region, along with their driving mechanisms, and comparing these with the broader trend of “warming and humidifying” in the Northwest can provide a scientific foundation for adapting to and addressing climate change. Based on a study of precipitation and temperature data from seven meteorological stations in Eastern Xinjiang from 1960 to 2022, the following findings were observed: (1) The climate of eastern Xinjiang is generally characterized by a warming and humidifying trend, with the rates of mean annual temperature and total annual precipitation being 0.39 °C/10 a and 3.32 mm/10 a. The eastern part of Xinjiang has less precipitation, with a lower growth rate than that of the neighboring regions, and higher temperatures, with a higher growth rate than that of the neighboring regions. (2) The first principal component of precipitation explains 47.85% of the variation in total precipitation, with a significant upward trend (p < 0.05) and an abrupt change in the late 1970s. It contains strong signals of regional precipitation, temperature, and dry and wet changes. (3) The increase in the first principal component of annual precipitation in eastern Xinjiang is mainly related to the warming of SSTs in the Indian Ocean and the central-eastern part of the tropical southern Pacific Ocean as well as the weakening of the Asian monsoon.