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. 2019:2:122-129.
doi: 10.1038/s41893-019-0220-7. Epub 2019 Feb 11.

China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management

Chi Chen  1 , Taejin Park  1 , Xuhui Wang  2 , Shilong Piao  2 , Baodong Xu  1   3 , Rajiv K Chaturvedi  4 , Richard Fuchs  5 , Victor Brovkin  6 , Philippe Ciais  7 , Rasmus Fensholt  8 , Hans Tømmervik  9 , Govindasamy Bala  10 , Zaichun Zhu  11 , Ramakrishna R Nemani  12 , Ranga B Myneni  1
Affiliations

China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management

Chi Chen et al. Nat Sustain. 2019.

Abstract

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct (human land-use management) and indirect factors (climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, recovery from natural disturbances, etc.). Among these, climate change and CO2 fertilization effect seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000-2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India, and overlapping with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programs to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly due to increasing harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface/ground-water irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the "Greening Earth", accounting for over a third, and likely more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Fig. 1|
Fig. 1|. Map of trends in annual average MODIS LAI over 2000–2017.
Statistically significant trends (Mann-Kendall test, p ≤ 0.1) are color coded. Grey areas show vegetated land with statistically insignificant trends. White areas depict barren lands, permanent ice-covered areas, permanent wetlands and built-up areas. Blue areas represent water. The inset shows the frequency distribution of statistically significant trends. The highlighted greening areas in red circles overlap with croplands mostly with the exception of circle number 4. Similar patterns are seen at p ≤ 0.05 and the seven greening clusters are dominantly visible even at p ≤ 0.01.
Fig. 2|
Fig. 2|. Trends in forests and other woody vegetation of China.
a, Trend in annual average LAI. b, Change in tree cover fraction between 2014–16 and 2000–02 over areas showing statistically significant LAI trends in (a). Grey areas show vegetated land with statistically insignificant LAI trends or predominantly herbaceous vegetation. White areas depict land that is not vegetated. Black lines are boundaries of the first-level administrative divisions. c, d, Areal fraction of tree cover fraction (TCF) (c) and non-tree vegetation cover fraction (NTVCF) (d) over forests and other woody vegetation that is greater than the climatology during a particular period, i.e. 2000–05, 2006–11, and 2012–16. Climatology is the mean of values from long-term observations. The colors further confine the analysis to LAI greening (green bars), browning (browning bars) and no LAI change (grey bars) areas.
Fig. 3|
Fig. 3|. Leaf area trends in croplands of China and India.
a, b, Trend in annual average LAI over croplands in China (a) and India (b). c–d, Ratio of harvested area (circle) and arable area (asterisk) with respect to year 2000 values for China (c), India (d) and the world (e). The asterisk circled in red in (c) is an outlier. The vertical dash line in (e) indicates the year 2000.
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