Due to low temperature, no crops are cultivated betweenJanuary and March in the region. With the temperature gradually increasing,crops start to grow from April. Considering the last four months, rainfall andtemperature indices were above the thirteen-year average, resulting in anincrease of the fraction of actually cropped land by 4.1 percentage points, andan increase in biomass by 7.2%. As a result, conditions are favorable for thesowing and early growth of spring crops. The NDVI clusters reflect good cropcondition in this period. West Liaoning province and parts of eastern InnerMongolia have low vegetation condition according to the VCIx map, because nocrops are grown yet. The potential biomass is poor compared to the five-yearaverage in partly cropped arable land, which may be a result of theenvironmental indices (a higher temperature average but low rainfall) in thisperiod.

Figure4.7. Crop condition China Inner Mongolia region

(a) NDVI bacground                                           (b) Crop condition development graph based onNDVI

(c) Spatial NDVI patterns compared to 5YA                       (d) NDVI Profile

(c) Maxium VCI                                                                     (d) Cropped arable land fraction

(g) Biomass