Assessment impacts of climate variability and LULC change on net primary productivity in the process of rapid urbanization: a case study in Jianghan Plain of China

What is it about?

Jianghan Plain is one of the most important grain and timber production regions in China and could potentially be a large-scale carbon sink, which is undergoing rapid changes in land use/land cover (LULC), making it a critical area in which to discuss the impact of climate variability and LULC change on regional net primary productivity (NPP). The goal of this study is to investigate the spatio-temporal variation characteristics of LULC, and to explore the impact of climate variability and LULC change on regional NPP in Jianghan Plain from 2000 to 2010 based on the CASA model, remote sensing datasets, meteorological data, and LULC data. The results are summarized as follows: (1) The significant geographical variations are characterized mainly by the transformation from farmland to wetlands and constructive land in the Jianghan Plain from 2000 to 2010. (2) The highest yield of NPP was 557.37 gC/m2 in 2007, and the lowest yield was 483.45 gC/m2 in 2009. (3) NPP spatial distribution has obvious uneven characteristics on the regional scale, which was consistent with the attenuation trend of "hills-plain-river-city" for the NPP spatial distribution. (4) 43.55% of regional NPP increased overall, and 56.45% of regional NPP decreased in Jianghan Plain from 2000 to 2010. (5) The correlation analysis shows that the correlation coefficient between annual total NPP and the annual precipitation and annual temperature was -0.4471 and 0.6296, respectively. (6) Total NPP has decreased 0.09 TgC (1 TgC=1012 gC) in Jianghan Plain from 2000 to 2010, which mainly consists of farmland (0.2 TgC), and forest (0.03 TgC). On the contrary, the total NPP for wetlands and constructive land have increased 0.14 TgC and 0.04 TgC, respectively. Finally, the results may provide scientific information not only for investigating the influence of climate variability and LULC change on regional NPP, but also for research of the terrestrial carbon cycle in China.

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