Synergistic analysis of climate and anthropogenic impacts on NPP dynamics in India’s Western Ghats using geodetector

The importance of integrating climate resilience into conservation efforts to safeguard the Western Ghats, one of the hottest hotspots in the world, is underscored by our findings. The research was designed to provide an integrated approach to help preserve the ecological productivity in a biodiversity sensitive area. The study investigates the dynamics of terrestrial productivity, examining its trends over time (2001-2023) and identifying the various factors that influence it, a topic that has been understudied in this biodiversity hotspot. In 2019, Net Primary Productivity (NPP) results experienced significant declines across all land cover types, with the decline starting in 2015 when forest NPP dropped by 0.24 and cropland by 0.1 kg C m[Formula: see text] year[Formula: see text]. The NPP steadily recovered the following year, especially in the croplands. The factor detector q value indicated the degree of influence of each factor as vegetation parameters ([Formula: see text]), climatic indicators ([Formula: see text]), anthropogenic factor ([Formula: see text]), and topographic condition ([Formula: see text]). Results from the innovative approach to assess spatial heterogeneity emphasize the influence of the combinations of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) with Fraction of Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR), Leaf Area Index (LAI), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Land Surface Temperature (LST), and Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), followed by LST interacting with FPAR, and NDVI with LAI, had the greatest impact on NPP. The study employs multiple regression to evaluate the effects of variables, the Mann-Kendall method for trend analysis, and Geo-detector for spatial variation.