Detecting the response characteristics and thresholds of grassland spring phenology to climatic factors in the Mongolian Plateau

• Published in: Ecological indicators 2023-09, Vol.153, p.110440, Article 110440
• Main Authors: Wang, Meiyu, Zhao, Jianjun, Zhang, Hongyan, Zhang, Zhengxiang, Guo, Xiaoyi, Zhang, Tingting, Wu, Rihan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Climate change; Grassland spring phenology; Mongolian Plateau; Remote sensing
• ISSN: 1470-160X; 1872-7034
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.110440

•GSP of the grassland in MP showed the trend of −0.656 day/decade in 1982–2015.•Vapor Pressure (VAP) is the key climatic factor affecting the GSP.•The interaction effect between VAP and PRE could explain 69.35% GSP changes.•The temperature and VAP showed a nonlinear relationship with GSP. Understanding the response characteristics and thresholds of grassland spring phenology (GSP) to different climatic factors in arid and semi-arid regions is of great significance to deal with global climate change. The Mongolian Plateau is one of the largest plateaus located in arid and semi-arid regions of eastern Asia, extremely sensitive to climate change. At present, the response characteristics and thresholds of the grassland spring phenology to climate factors in the Mongolian Plateau remain uncertain. Here, we used statistical analysis, random forest and geographical detector to explore these uncertainty. We found that 1) 76.67% of study area showed a significant advancing trend. GSP has significantly advanced by −0.656 days/decade (P