Abstract: [Objective]This paper was intended to explore the spatial characteristics of vegetation changes in karst faulted basins during 2001-2016, and to quantify the influence and contribution of the key driving forces to the vegetation restoration, in order to provide a theoretical basis for ecological construction of rocky desertification areas.[Method]Based on the time-series MODIS-NDVI from 2001 to 2016 after Savitzky-Golay (SG) filtering, Theil-Sen Median (TS) analysis and CMK test were applied to obtain the spatial characteristics of the annual average NDVI value of faulted basins, and then, the Bayesian Belief Networks (BBN) model was constructed using Netica software to quantify the influences and contributions of the driving factors on the annual average NDVI, such as afforestation area, lithology and elevation.[Result]During the period of 2001-2016, regions with significantly increased annual average NDVI were mainly distributed in the middle Xuanwei and Liupanshui of Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and the southeast of Yanyuan of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, while regions with decreased annual average NDVI were mainly distributed in central Muli of Hengduan Mountains, southern Miyi county, and central Kunming and Yuxi of Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau; the influences of the key driving forces on annual NDVI changes were in the following order:afforestation area, altitude, temperature, population density, slope, land use, lithology; the probability of vegetation improvement grew with the increasing area of afforestation, which mainly concentrated on the afforestation area over 150 km²; the probability of vegetation improvement increased significantly in areas with altitudes lower than 1 845 m,and the probability of vegetation improvement decreased obviously with altitudes higher than 1 845 m; the probability of vegetation improvement dropped in the areas with significantly increased temperature; the NDVI change was correlated with population density, and the area with population density from 105 to 210 person·km^-2 was the key area with increased probability of vegetation improvement; the probability of vegetation improvement went up in the areas with gentle slopes, mainly between 0 and 6°; from the perspective of lithology, the areas with vegetation improvement were mainly distributed in the karst area and the semi-karst area.[Conclusion]The vegetation changes in most areas of karst faulted basins (78%) were not significant, but the vegetation in 11.4% of the areas was significantly improved, and the vegetation in 10.6% of the area was evidently degraded. The most important factor causing vegetation change was the afforestation area in human ecological construction, followed by natural factors such as altitude and temperature; ecological projects such as afforestation project were mainly implemented in rocky desertification areas, so the improvement of vegetation in karst areas was better than that in non-karst areas; For restoration of rocky desertification in faulted basins, the natural restoration was recommended for areas with low probability of vegetation improvement, such as areas with high altitude and steep slopes; while in areas with centralized distribution of vegetation restoration, we should pay more attention to vegetation protection in near future; the areas with significant increase of temperature and dense population, due to strong climate and artificial disturbance, the probability of vegetation degradation have increased, which would be a focus in future researches.

Key words: NDVI, Karst, faulted basins, rocky desertification, driving forces, Bayesian Belief Networks