Response of Vegetation over the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau to Projected Warming Climate

Abstract

In this study， the vegetation over the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau （QXP） in response to future climate change is projected by long-term simulations of CLM4.5-CNDV.The forcing data of projection was built up was on the base of NCAR/NCEP lower layer atmospheric data and CMIP5 datasets of 19 models.It is concluded that the QXP will grow greening in future， with the increased LAI resulted from the expanded vegetation coverage compared with historical period.The dominating PFTs have considerable migration and transition with a tendency of “warm upgrading” in projection， with tree-type PFTs spreading to farther northern and western QXP， and the much drier and colder regions in the QXP having a bigger coverage than before.The main LAI increasing areas agree well with regions with the significant variations of precipitation and 10 cm soil water content under the warmer climate in future， suggesting the projected vegetation change over the QXP may closely associate with the variation of surface hydrological cycle.It is also noticed that the bias of vegetation landuse/land cover initialization setting up in CLM4.5-CNDV have caused big uncertainties in vegetation simulation and projection， which we need to be fixed in our studies in future.

Keywords

• qinghai-xizang plateau （qxp）
• vegetation change
• coverage