## 6 Conclusions  
This study analyzed the spatial-temporal variations and spatial autocorrelation of vegetation growth conditions in the ARB at the pixel scale and investigated the spatial-temporal heterogeneity of the relationships between vegetation indexes and climatic, anthropogenic and hydrological factors at the sub-basin scale, using GTWR models from 1982 to 2013.  
The trends of LAI, FVC and GPP in the ARB from 1982 to 2013 were quite different, but only the variation of area-average annual FVC proved to be significant with an increase rate of 0.0004/year (\(p<0.05\)). All the annual vegetation indexes underwent a rapid change around the year 2001. Additionally, all three indexes showed an overall increasing trend in the Songnen Plain and a decreasing trend in the Mongolian part of the ARB during 1982-2013. The local Moran's I results of LAI, FVC, and GPP suggested that similar decreasing trends in low-low agglomeration area of LAI and FVC on the Sanjiang Plain occurred during the study period.  
According to the results of the GTWR models, the relationships between vegetation indexes and driving factors exhibited significant spatial-temporal heterogeneity. For example, a general tendency of the coefficients for Pcp existed: generally lower in the northeast and relatively higher in the southwest. The area near the Argun River Basin and the Shilka River Basin showed a high degree of positive influence on Pcp during all four phases, which was most likely attributed to the relatively dry climate in this region. Additionally, the negative values of regression coefficients for pasture were mainly concentrated near the Songnen Plain. The continuous conversion of pasture to paddy field may be one of the reasons for the negative impact of pastures on the vegetation dynamics in this region. SURQ had the smallest range of positive regression coefficients in the model for FVC among the three vegetation indexes, indicating that the relationship between surface runoff and vegetation productivity or vegetation vertical canopy distributions may be more positive than that with vegetation horizontal cover. Additionally, a significant increase in the range of positive regression coefficients for SM between Period 1 and Period 2 may suggest the increasingly apparent positive effect of SM runoff on vegetation growth in the study area during the period of 1982-1999.  
Natural and anthropogenic factors jointly took effect and interacted with each other to affect the vegetated regime of the region. The decrease in the impact of precipitation on vegetation growth in the Songnen Plain was determined as having commenced around 1991, which was most likely attributable to dramatic changes in water use styles induced by local land use changes, and this corresponded to the negative correlation between pasture areas and vegetation indexes during the same period.  
Conceptualization, W.Z.; data curation, S.Z., S.W., B.Z. and Q.X.; formal analysis, S.Z.; methodology, W.Z.; software, S.Z.; Writing--original draft, S.Z.; writing--review and editing, W.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China, grant numbers (2016 YFA0602302) and (2018 YFB0605603-04).  
Not applicable.  
The data presented in this study are openly available in FigShare at [[https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13498542.v2](https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13498542.v2)]([https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13498542.v2](https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13498542.v2)), reference number [13498542].  
Open discussions in weekly seminars with the graduate students in [PERSON]'s group are acknowledged.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.