Spatial-Temporal Change of Vegetation Coverage Based on NDVI in Liupanshui City

Liupanshui city is an important karst area where the situation of rocky desertification is very serious in Guizhou Province, southern china. Vegetation coverage is an important ecological parameter for evaluating rocky desertification degree. This study investigates different characteristics of the spatial-temporal changes of vegetation cover and associated driving forces of vegetation coverage change were also analyzed in Liupanshui city of western Guizhou Province using the data set of Landsat (2002–2015) at spatial resolution of 30m and temporal resolution of 16-day. The results show that: 1) the spatial distribution pattern of vegetation cover in Liupanshui city is high in the east whereas low in the west. The average annual vegetation coverage in the south of Liupanshui city is higher than in the north. The average annual vegetation coverage in Panxian County, Shuicheng County, Zhongshan District, and Liuzhi District are 0.6047, 0.5949, 0.4432, and 0.6140 respectively. 2) Average annual vegetation coverage improved obviously in the past 13 years. The growth rate of average annual vegetation coverage is 0.028/10yr and the average vegetation coverage is 0.5957. 3) The proportion of vegetation cover with extremely significant increase and significantly increase is far higher than that of vegetation cover with extremely significant reduced and significantly reduced in the city. In other words, the improvement in vegetation cover may expand to most parts of the study area.