Vegetation greening steered by land use management in the Chinese Loess Plateau has been widely reported, however studies that quantitatively assessing and explicitly linking the anthropogenic forcing on vegetation greening and browning are scarce. Here in this study, we calculate the increment and rate of change of fractional vegetation cover (FVC) from 1998 to 2018 in the Loess Plateau, and compare the results with changing rainfall, soil types, and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to detail a systematic assessment of the role of the climate-vegetation-human nexus. We have observed that nearly 80% of the study area has undergone greening, and noticed that rainfall was not the main driver of rapid vegetation change, instead of human land use management such as, irrigation along the Yellow River, snowmelt-runoff irrigation, and irrigation from reservoirs formed by check dams contributed the most for the increased FVC in the Chinese Loess Plateau. Concurrently, rapid vegetation browning is almost fully driven by urban expansion. Our findings show that GDP growth promotes both browning and greening, indicative of sustainable development in the Loess plateau region. These contrasting trends reveal that the relationship between human activities and greening is very complex.

黄土高原地区土地利用管理引导的植被绿化得到了广泛报道，但是，对人为对植被绿化和褐变的强迫进行定量评估和明确联系的研究很少。在此研究中，我们计算黄土高原地区1998年至2018年植被覆盖度（FVC）的增量和变化率，并将结果与​​降雨，土壤类型和国内生产总值（GDP）的变化进行比较，以详细说明对气候-植物-人类联系的作用进行系统的评估。我们已经观察到研究区域将近80％进行了绿化，并注意到降雨并不是快速改变植被的主要驱动力，而不是人类土地利用管理，例如黄河沿岸的灌溉，融雪径流灌溉，在黄土高原地区，由止水坝形成的水库的灌溉和FVC的增加贡献最大。同时，植被的快速褐化几乎完全受到城市扩张的驱动。我们的发现表明，GDP的增长促进了褐变和绿化，这表明了黄土高原地区的可持续发展。这些相反的趋势表明，人类活动与绿化之间的关系非常复杂。