Dynamic monitoring of the vegetation restoration in arid desert area

Vegetation cover is an important parameter to estimate the regionally ecological environment. The NDVI of TM images in 1987, 2003 and 2008 was used to estimate the effectiveness of vegetation restoration of drought desert region in the Tenger Desert. This study showed that the high vegetation cover area increased and the low vegetation cover area decreased from 1987 to 2008, implying that the vegetation restoration was effective. This study also showed that the ratio of vegetation restoration area to totally regional area increased 18.86% during the period 2003-2008 from 13.51% during the period 1987-2003 by comparing the area changes among different vegetation cover, indicating that vegetation restoration showed a hysteretic nature and its ecological benefits was gradually increasing trend.