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Plant phenology is influenced by various climatic factors such as temperature, precipitation, insolation, and humidity, etc. Among these factors, temperature and precipitation are proved to be the most important. However, the relative importance of these two factors is different among various phenophases and regions and is seldom discussed along environmental gradients. Based on normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from the NDVI3g dataset and using the mid-point method, we extracted the start date of the growing season (SOG) and the end date of the growing season (EOG) in northern China during 1982–2012. To determine which climate factor was more influential on plant phenology, partial correlation analysis was applied to analyse the spatial difference between the response of SOG and EOG to temperature and precipitation. Finally, we calculated the temperature and precipitation sensitivities of the SOG and EOG. The results showed that: (1) SOG displayed an advancing trend in most regions, while EOG was delayed for all the vegetation types during 1982–2012. (2) SOG was mainly triggered by preseason temperature. The increase in temperature caused an overall advance in SOG. However, the relationship between SOG and precipitation varied among different vegetation types. Regarding EOG, precipitation had greater impacts than temperature in relatively arid environments, such as deserts, steppes and meadow biomes. (3) The response of vegetation phenology (both SOG and EOG) to temperature became stronger with increasing preseason precipitation across space. The response of EOG to precipitation became weaker from arid regions to relatively humid regions. These results provide a better understanding of the spatial pattern of the phenological response along the precipitation gradient and a reference for assessing impacts of future climate change on vegetation phenology, especially in transitional and fragile zones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]