Fig. 1

Changes in the relationship between vegetation and annual rainfall. a Changes in normalized woody cover and LAI_max along a mean annual rainfall gradient (50 mm yr⁻¹ steps) for 1992–2012. Arid, semi-arid and humid regions were defined as < 300, 300–700 and > 700 mm yr⁻¹, respectively. b Comparison of changes in normalized woody cover, LAI_max and annual rainfall for arid (n = 3853), semi-arid (n = 8159) and humid regions (n = 15,824). c Changes in the sensitivity of LAI_max to annual rainfall (expressed by the linear regression slope over 15 years: β_LAI-Rainfall) and normalized annual rainfall for 1982–2015 along with changes in woody cover (10% yr⁻¹ steps). Normalizations were calculated by the z-score: X_i = (x_i–x)/σ(x) (where x and σ(x) are the mean and standard deviation of x_i). d–f Spatial agreement of areas with changes in woody cover and areas with changes in β_LAI-Rainfall for arid, semi-arid and humid regions. Lines in  b from top to bottom represent the maximum, third quartile, median, first quartile and minimum values