Response of vegetation to water balance conditions at different time scales across the karst area of southwestern China—A remote sensing approach

Abstract This work identifies the vegetation communities, landform types and seasons in which vegetation is most sensitive to water imbalance in the karst area of southwestern China. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index (SPEI) were used to evaluate the effects of water balance conditions on vegetation in different seasons and at different time scales. During the growing seasons from 1982 to 2013, the vegetation growth in 79% of the study area was statistically significantly sensitive to the water balance condition ( p p