Impact of Precipitation Fluctuation on Desert-Grassland ANPP

Precipitation change has significantly influenced annual net primary productivity (ANPP) at either annual or seasonal scales in desert steppes in arid and semi-arid regions. In order to reveal the process of precipitation driving ANPP at different time scales, responses of different ANPP levels to the inter-annual and intra-annual precipitation fluctuations were analyzed. ANPP was reversed by building a ground reflectance spectrum model, from 2000 to 2015, using the normalized differential vegetation index of the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS-NDVI) data at 250 m × 250 m spatial resolution. Since the description of the differently expressing forms of precipitation are not sufficient in former studies in order to overcome the deficiency of former studies, in this study, intra-annual precipitation fluctuations were analyzed not only with precipitation of May–August, June–August, July–August, and August, respectively, which have direct influence on vegetation productivity within the year, but quantitative description, vector precipitation (R), concentration ratio (Cd), and concentration period (D), were also used to describe the overall characteristics of intra-annual precipitation fluctuations. The concentration ratio and the maximum precipitation period of the intra-annual precipitation were represented by using monthly precipitation. The results showed that: (1) in the period from 1971 to 2015, the maximum annual precipitation is 3.76 times that of the minimum in the Urat desert steppe; (2) vector precipitation is more significantly related to ANPP (r = 0.7724, p = 0.000) compared to meteorological annual precipitation and real annual precipitation influence; and (3) annual precipitation is almost concentrated in 5–8 months and monthly precipitation accumulation has significantly effected ANPP, especially in the period of June–August, since the vegetation composition in the study area was mainly sub-shrubs and perennial grasses, which were more sensitive to precipitation accumulation. These findings suggest that: (1) In the desert steppe, the inter-annual fluctuation and the intra-annual distribution of precipitation have a direct impact on ANPP; (2) the annual vector precipitation showed an extremely significant regression relationship with ANPP; and (3) monthly precipitation fluctuations (May–August) possess the accumulative effect on ANPP during the growing period in the desert steppe, while precipitation accumulation from June to August shows the most significant impact.