Response of vegetation normalized different vegetation index to different meteorological disaster indexes in karst region of Guangxi, China

Fragile karst areas of Guangxi are the key areas of vegetation protection and restoration work of the government. It is of great significance to study the effects of meteorological disasters on vegetation change for disaster prevention and reduction and ecological protection in the karst areas. The Normalized Differential Vegetation Index (NDVI), as a tool for monitoring vegetation growth, has a strong responsiveness to vegetation and can qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate the vegetation cover and its growth vitality. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the trend of vegetation change and the impacts of multiple meteorological hazards, such as drought, torrential rainfall, high temperature, and low temperature, on the vegetation of the karst region in Guangxi by using the linear trend method, GIS spatial analysis, and correlation analysis, using the MODIS NDVI and temperature and precipitation information from 2000 to 2020 in the karst region of Guangxi. The results show that: (1) NDVI increased significantly in the karst areas, and 32.2% of the areas had significant improvement in vegetation. The improvement was the most obvious mainly in the central part of the study area, while the vegetation degradation trend was obvious in partial scattered areas in northeast and southwest. (2) On the interannual scale, NDVI was negatively correlated with some meteorological disaster indexes, such as relative humidity index, the number of drought days, the amount of extremely heavy rainstorm, the amount of heavy rainstorm, the number of days with high temperature of ≥35 °C, the number of days with high temperature of 35–37 °C, the number of days with high temperature of ≥37 °C, the minimum temperature, and the effective accumulated temperature of ≤0 °C. The obvious negative effect area of drought on vegetation was mainly concentrated in the middle of the study area, and that of rainfall was mainly distributed in the southwest, northeast and northwest; that of high temperature was mainly distributed in the northwest and northeast, and that of low temperature was mainly concentrated in the southwest and north. (3) On the multi-year monthly scale, the responses of NDVI to drought, high temperature and low temperature disaster indexes had a lag effect, but had no lag effect on rainfall disaster indexes. The lag time of vegetation to drought was 1 month, and the lag time to high temperature and low temperature was 3 months.