Response of vegetation to temperature, precipitation and solar radiation time-scales: A case study over mainland Australia

Climate conditions have important influences on vegetation growth and there are also effects of temporal lags of plants growth to climate factors. This paper is based on GIMMS-NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) and CRU (Climate Research Unit) climate datasets to analyze the relationship between vegetation and climate factors (temperature, precipitation and solar radiation). Results show that Western Australia responds to climate factors at long time-scales, however, Eastern Australia at short time-scales (with mean value of 6.6 months in totally areas). Moreover, vegetation growth in Australia's coastal areas is mainly influenced by solar radiation, while precipitation and solar radiation jointly play important roles in central Australia.