Abstract:Vegetation productivity is a key variable of vegetation vitality, and it can reflect the quality of terrestrial ecosystem. Studying on response of forest net primary productivity (NPP) to climate change is the basis of understanding carbon budget of forest ecosystem, which is helpful to understand the interaction mechanism between climate change and forest ecosystem, and thus is of great significance to understand the terrestrial carbon cycle and global change. At present, there are a lot of studies on the spatio-temporal distribution of vegetation NPP at national and regional scales in China, in which many studies are on NPP in forest ecosystem. Most of the research scales are nationwide or fragmented areas, with administrative or watershed scales being the most common. However, these studies are generally scattered, and some of them have inconsistent or even contradictory results. Meanwhile they lack analysis and comparison of similarities and differences, as well as systematization and comprehensiveness. This situation is not conducive to the comprehensive grasp of the overall research in China, to understanding the clear and definite research conclusions, and to further exploring of the regular pattern and its causes. It also greatly affects the accurate assessment and understanding mechanism of forest NPP. Therefore, it is necessary to sort out, integrate and summarize the relevant research results. In view of this, we collected relevant literature on the vegetation NPP research in China in recent decades. Based on the research results, we systematically summarized the spatio-temporal distribution of the NPP in forest ecosystems at national and regional scales and its possible future trends, and revealed the relationship of NPP with climate factors (mainly CO2, temperature, and precipitation) and its response to climate change. We also pointed out the main problems existing in the current research and the key research directions in the future. It is expected that this study will play a reference role for further research.