Desertification has become a major threat to the global ecological environment, and the desertification monitoring is crucial for desertification prevention and control. Based on the Suomi/NPP (National Polar-orbiting Partnership) remote sensing data and the observation data of 8 meteorological stations during the vegetation growing season (from May to September) from 2014 to 2021 in the Qaidam Basin, the desertification difference index (DDI) was calculated by using NDVI-Albedo (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index-Albedo) feature space. Moreover, the natural discontinuity method, Sen+M-K trend analysis method, correlation analysis method, accuracy error matrix and transfer matrix analysis were also used to explore the spatial and temporal dynamic evolution of land desertification and the influence of meteorological factors to desertification in the Qaidam Basin from 2014 to 2020 during the vegetation growing season. The results are as follows: (1) The NDVI-Albedo feature space performs a high applicability in the Qaidam Basin (R² greater than or equal to 0.65), with an overall classification accuracy of 79.38% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.62. (2) From 2014 to 2021, the degree of land desertification in the eastern and southern Qaidam Basin is lower than that in the western and central Qaidam Basin. Furthermore, DDI shows a significantly increase in some areas, especially in southern and eastern region with the increase rate of DDI over 0.01a^-1. The total area of desertification land in the Qaidam Basin shows a decreasing trend with a rate of -1 173 km²·a^-1. Additionally, a transforming characteristic occurs between different degrees desertification land that severe desertification lands transferred to mild desertification land. (3) Correlation analysis shows that precipitation and average relative humidity are significantly positively correlated with DDI (P<0.01), and correlation coefficients are 0.91 and 0.86, respectively, indicating that the water is the dominant factor affecting desertification in the Qaidam Basin.

The temperature and precipitation in the Tibetan Plateau (hereinafter referred to as the ‘TP’) increase as a whole, and the vegetation of the plateau has changed significantly under the influence of climate change. This paper summarizes the research progress on plateau climate change and its impact on plateau vegetation coverage and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), phenology, net primary productivity (NPP), biomass carbon pool, plant diversity and so on, and the future directions of research are discussed and expected. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) In recent 60 years, the annual average temperature increased significantly with an average increase of 0.37 ℃ per 10 years, and the annual precipitation increased with an average increase of 10.40 mm per 10 years in the TP. The warm and dry trend of climate in the southeast of the TP and the warm and humid trend of climate in the northwest of the TP were obvious. (2) Under the background of overall improvement, the vegetation coverage and NDVI degraded in local regions of the TP. The improved area accounted for 67.7%-75.0% of the plateau total area, and they mainly distributed in the central and eastern regions. (3) Under of the influence of climate change, the green returning period of vegetation in the plateau advanced, the dry and yellow period postponed, and the growth period prolonged on the whole. However, there is a great debate on the green returning period of plateau vegetation in advance after 2000. (4) NPP of plateau vegetation increased significantly as a whole, while the increasing rate of NPP slowed down after 2000. NPP of vegetation increased significantly in southern Qilian Mountains and alpine meadows of northern Nianqing Tanggula Mountains, while it decreased in northern Tibetan Plateau, ‘one river, two rivers’ and the central and western regions of Tibet three river sources. (5) The biomass carbon pool of the plateau vegetation showed an increasing trend, which was carbon sink in general, and the spatial heterogeneity was obvious. The biomass carbon of alpine meadow and steppe increased significantly, while that of other grassland increased slightly, and even decreased in some areas. (6) The plant diversity in the plateau has changed significantly. Although the research results were different, there is no doubt that the climate change has affected significantly on species composition and plant diversity of alpine grassland community. It is suggested to strengthen data networking observation comparison and multi-scale effect research, deepen internal mechanism research and multi-factor comprehensive and quantitative analysis, strengthen sharing mechanism and improve the coping ability to climate change in the future, so as to promote ecological protection and high-quality development of the plateau.

 Based on monthly dust data from 9 automatic weather stations in the Qaidam Basin from 1961 to 2019, the dust index was calculated, and the spatiotemporal variation characteristics and the main influence factors of dust intensity were analyzed. The results are as follows: (1) In recent 59 years, the intensity of dust showed a significant decrease trend with a deceleration of 2.05 a-1 in the Qaidam Basin. The annual variation of dust intensity showed a single peak distribution with the strongest in the 1970s. The mutation of dust index occurred in 1990 in the Qaidam Basin. The monthly average dust index also showed a single peak distribution to some extent, with the peak in April in spring and the valley in December in winter. (2) The dust intensity in the Qaidam Basin was high in the abdomen and low in the periphery as a whole, in recent 59 years, except for Lenghu, the dust intensity of other areas showed a significant weakening trend. The weakening rates of Nuomuhong and Golmud were faster and the weakening rate of dust intensity in spring was the fastest. (3) In recent 59 years, the annual average temperature increased, precipitation increased, wind speed decreased, windy days decreased in the Qaidam Basin, which was important reasons for the weakening of dust intensity.