Characteristics and trends of rainstorm activities and their impacts on seasonal vegetation variations in coastal China

Within the context of global climate changes, rainstorms have increasingly become one of the important ecological interferences limiting plant growth and population turnover. However, due to the significant spatial and temporal variability of rainstorms, determining their quantitative relationships with plant growth at some longer temporal and larger spatial scales is challenging. In this study, the relationships between rainstorm changes and vegetation activities are explored by analysing the spatial and temporal correlations between the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and rainstorm frequency on the coast of China during the period of 1982–2015. Our results show that: (1) Both rainstorm frequency and vegetation activities tend to increase gradually over the study period. The impact of rainstorms on vegetation in the northern part of the study area is greater than that in the southern part. (2) Overall, rainstorms have a significant (p < 0.1) negative impact on vegetation activities in the northern parts of the study area, especially during the summer months. Furthermore, the negative impact of rainstorms on vegetation in autumn tends to be strengthened into the future. (3) Rainstorms overall have significant and negative impacts on shrub, coniferous forest, broad-leaved forest during the growing season. The strong-impact seasons and locations of rainstorm on vegetation activities identified by our study can dramatically benefit future ecosystem and water resource management in coastal China.