An overview of climate change and vegetation growth in Northern Tibet

This paper summarized the advances of climate change and vegetation growth in northern Tibet during the past few years. Results showed that the main tendency was becoming warmer and more humid in Nagqu area which is benefit to the improvement of vegetation growth and ecological environment, but Ali area is becoming warmer and drier which has opposite effect on vegetation growth. Previous studies indicated that many meteorological factors have affected vegetation growth to some extent such as minimum temperature, water vapor pressure, average temperature, maximum temperature and precipitation and so forth. The research of vegetation variation indicated that grassland presented degradation tendency in northern Tibet. Besides, the growth of human population and intensified urbanization are major factors that affecting vegetation change. Therefore, human activity could not be neglected except for the meteorological condition as one of main factors in grassland degradation.