Grassland type-dependent spatiotemporal characteristics of productivity in Inner Mongolia and its response to climate factors

Abstract Grassland located in the arid and semi-arid ecosystems has an evident ecological fragility and is easily vulnerable to climatic variations. Although several studies have shown the close relationship between net primary production (NPP) and seasonal or annual climate changes, it is currently unclear that whether such response in semi-arid regions is associated with grassland types that have different physiological characteristics, especially in the grassland ecosystem of Inner Mongolia that spans meadow-typical-desert steppe. This study used NPP estimated by Carnegie–Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) model, and focused on grassland type-dependent spatiotemporal changes of NPP and its response to climate factors on annual and seasonal scales. The results showed that the NPP simulated by the CASA model was in good agreement with the ground-observed NPP (R2 = 0.62, P