Using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI) which was derived from MODIS and GIMMS to characterize the vegetation cover in Zhejiang Province,this study has investigated the responses of vegetation cover variation to climate change at yearly and monthly time scales,by integrating NDVI with climate factors(temperature,precipitation and humid index) of sixty-three meteorological sites.The results indicated the following viewpoint.In the past 30 years,the climate of Zhejiang Province presented a process of distinct warming and drying.The vegetation cover had a slowly decreasing trend which mainly results from damaging forest and restraining agriculture activity.The area with NDVI significant decreasing occupied 29.1% of the total land area of Zhejiang.Vegetation cover reducing mainly happened in June to November.Precipitation and dry-wet condition had a crucial effect on NDVI inter-annual variation.The relationship of NDVI and humidity is stronger than that of NDVI with precipitation and temperature,whereas,its coefficient and partial coefficient all passed the confidence test of 0.05 levels.The close relativity between NDVI and humidity indicated that humid increasing could promote vegetation growing.At monthly scale,the response of vegetation variation to climatic factors suggested that temperature is a key factor for impacting vegetation growth in winter,and vegetation variation lag nearly two months responding to precipitation and dry-wet condition in summer.This study also highlighted that human activities influencing on vegetation cover variation should not be ignored because the NDVI value of the crop planting area was increasing with agricultural production level promoting in Zhejiang Province.
