A Study on the Relation between Temporal NDVI and Economy and Population: A Case on Chongqing City in Three Gorges Region, China

In the context of global climatic change, the distribution and variety of vegetation on continental ecosystem are important indices well responding to the climatic change. It is an effective approach to study the impact of human activities upon natural environment by analyzing dynamic trends of vegetation on time series. In this paper, we use 1 km resolution NDVI products from the Earth Observing System SPOT/VGT to analysis the relationship between NDVI and economy (indicated by Gross Domestic Product, GDP) and population (POP) in Chongqing city in three gorges region of southwestern China. It is found that the vegetation does not increase steadily and rapidly like GDP and POP with sustainable increasing trends from 1998 to 2005. In the second section, we deeply analyze the correction between NDVI and GDP and POP in six main districts on spatial distribution in 2000. It is pointed out that there are all negative correlation between some measurements of NDVI and GDP and POP respectively. But the similar correlation cannot be found, if the region is enlarged to the whole Chongqing city. Thus we evaluate correlation coefficient between NDVI and GDP and POP respectively by the mean of moving windows in every window. As a result, correlation coefficient is smaller if location is more far from the economic center of city.