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China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 122–129 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition and recovery from natural disturbances). Among these, climate change and CO2 fertilization effects seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India and overlaps with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programmes to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly owing to an increase in harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface- and/or groundwater irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the ‘Greening Earth’, accounting for over a third, and probably more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for a realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

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Fig. 1: Map of trends in annual average MODIS LAI for 2000–2017.
Fig. 2: Trends in forests and other woody vegetation of China.
Fig. 3: Leaf area trends in croplands of China and India.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed in this study are publicly available as referenced within the article. All data and scripts are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by NASA Earth Science Directorate. R.B.M. acknowledges funding by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. T.P. was funded by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program. P.C. was funded by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) Convergence Lab Changement climatique et usage des terres (CLAND) and by the European Research Council Synergy project SyG-2013-610028 IMBALANCE-P. H.T. was funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN #287402) and Nordforsk (CLINF). The article-processing charges for this publication were paid for by funds from a NASA Research Grant to Boston University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Chi Chen, Taejin Park, Baodong Xu & Ranga B. Myneni

  2. Sino-French Institute for Earth System Science, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Xuhui Wang & Shilong Piao

  3. Macro Agriculture Research Institute, College of Resource and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China

    Baodong Xu

  4. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Goa, India

    Rajiv K. Chaturvedi

  5. Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research—Atmospheric Environmental Research, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

    Richard Fuchs

  6. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

    Victor Brovkin

  7. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement/IPSL, CEA-CNRS-UVSQ, Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Philippe Ciais

  8. Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Rasmus Fensholt

  9. Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, Fram Centre, Tromsø, Norway

    Hans Tømmervik

  10. Center for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

    Govindasamy Bala

  11. Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Circular Economy, Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen, China

    Zaichun Zhu

  12. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Ramakrishna R. Nemani

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Contributions

C.C. carried out the analyses with contributions from T.P., X.W., B.X., R.K.C. and R.F. C.C. and R.B.M. wrote the article. All authors contributed ideas for analyses, comments and critiques on drafts.

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Correspondence to Chi Chen.

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Chen, C., Park, T., Wang, X. et al. China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management. Nat Sustain 2, 122–129 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0220-7

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