It has important significance to periodically evaluate the vegetation changes to reconstruct the regional ecological environment,protect the ecological security of the Northern region and maintain the sustainable development of society and economy because Alxa Plateau is a serious ecologically fragile area in China.Using remote sensing images and climate data,we investigated the changes of normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI)in the growing seasons and its response to climate changes in the Alxa Plateau based on the trend analysis,Hurst index and partial correlation analysis,aiming to analyze the spatial-temporal changes of vegetation coverage and its driving factors in the Alxa Plateau between 2000 and 2015 from two dimensions.From the point of temporal changes,vegetation coverage presented an increasing trend in the Ejina Banner,Alxa Right and Left Banner.In contrast,vegetation coverage of Alxa Left Banner was the highest.In summary,the vegetation coverage in the Alxa Plateau showed a trend of improvement and was dominated by low coverage and the vegetation coverage area accounted for 24.77%of the total area by the end of 2015.From the point of spatial changes,there were obvious regional differences in vegetation coverage.The vegetation coverage presented an increase trend in the southeast and a decrease trend in the northwest.Hurst index showed that the improving trend was mainly found in the Alxa Right and Left Banner,while the serious degradation trend was mainly distributed in Ejina Banner.From the point of driving factors,the response of vegetation coverage to precipitation and potential evapotranspiration had time lag.In addition,there was a significant positive correlation between declining of livestock quantity and improving of vegetation coverage.