3 Study area and data description

3.1 Study area

The study area is 3 x 3° ranging from 30.0° to 33.0°N and 90.5° to 93.5°E in the Naqu region located in the center of the Tibetan Plateau (TP), China. Due to the influence of the South Asian summer monsoon, the annual precipitation is approximately 500 mm in most of the central TP, with 75% of precipitation events occurring between June and August (Yang et al., 2013). Soil thawing and freezing take place around each May and November, respectively. As seen in Figure 2, most of the study area has a main vegetation type of high elevation alpine grasslands. The period of interest is during the growing season (May 1 to October 31) during 2010 to 2015. In the following dynamic analysis, five ground stations were employed, and three of them were identified as Station A, Station B and Station C. The network area covers all of the ground sites.