Climate change-induced vegetation greening reduces soil moisture sensitivity on the Tibetan Plateau

Climate change has profoundly altered the vegetation and soil moisture dynamics and intensified land-atmosphere interactions, particularly in climate sensitive regions. However, exactly how vegetation affects soil moisture responses to climate change and its regional differences remains unclear. In this paper, we investigated changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, vegetation, and soil moisture (SM), and estimated the impact of vegetation greening on soil moisture sensitivity to temperature and precipitation from 1982 to 2060 under various Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The results show that increasing trends of light precipitation under all SSPs are greater than that in the historical period, while changes in medium and extreme precipitation are weaker, which leading to smaller changes in SM relative to precipitation under all SSPs. Vegetation greening induced by warming and increased precipitation on the TP, reduces the negative contribution of temperature to SM and the positive contribution of precipitation on SM in semi-arid and arid regions, where the leaf area index (LAI) exhibits a positive correlation with SM. Additionally, the impact of vegetation greening on shallow SM responses to temperature intensifies during 2019~2060 under all SSPs compared to 1982~2018. These findings highlight the critical need for integrated land management strategies to address the compounded effects of vegetation-soil feedbacks under climate change.