Abstract: Landscape pattern analysis is an important method to understand the occurrence and development of ecological processes. In this study, we investigated the responses of vegetative productivity patterns of a gravel desert and a sandy desert (with a size of 1650 hm² each) in the desertoasis transition zone to sporadic rainfall events by using the MODIS data from June 22 to June 29, 2017. The internal landscape changes of these two habitats were different from each other. The area without increase of vegetation productivity (NDVI) in the gravel desert habitat was larger than that in sandy desert habitat. The change of vegetation productivity mainly occurred in the range of 0-0.01 in the gravel desert habitat, with its fluctuation area between 612.5 and 1200 hm². For the sandy desert habitat, the increase of vegetation productivity was concentrated above 0.01, and the fluctuation area ranged from 150 to 1587.5 hm². The landscape of the gravel desert habitat tended to be fragmented over time after rainfall events in the arid area, while the pattern of simple patches dominated the sandy desert habitat landscape.

Key words: biocrusts, low temperature, simulated warming., respiration