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Human impact plays an increasing role on vegetation change even on the Tibetan Plateau, an area that is commonly regarded as an ideal place to study climate change. We evaluate the nature and extent of human impact on vegetation dynamics by the comparison of two areas: the relative highly populated Lhasa area and a nearby less populated Lhari County. Our results indicate that human impact has mainly decreased vegetation greenness within 20 km of the urban area and major constructions during 1999–2013. However, the impact of human activities in a relatively large area is still minor and does not reverse the major trends of vegetation dynamics caused by the warming temperature in recent decades. It seems that the impact of anthropogenic factors on the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) trend is more apparent in the Lhasa area than in Lhari County. The major anthropogenic driving factor for vegetation browning in the Lhasa area is livestock number, while the factors, including the number of rural laborers and artificial forest areas, are positively correlated with the annual NDVI increase. The similar relationship between the annual NDVI and driving factors appeared in Lhari County, except for artificial forest areas. The warming temperature and the change in precipitation played dominant roles on vegetation greening in Lhari County than that in the Lhasa area.

Climate change and increasing human activities have induced lake expansion or shrinkage, posing a serious threat to the ecological security on the Inner Mongolian Plateau, China. However, the pattern of lake changes and how it responds to climate change and revegetation have rarely been reported. We investigated the pattern of lake-area changes in the Dalinor National Nature Reserve (DNR) using Landsat imagery during 1976–2015, and examined its relationship with changes in climate and vegetation factors. The total lake-area in the DNR has decreased by 11.6% from 1976 to 2015 with a rate of −0.55 km2 year−1. The largest Dalinor Lake reduced the most (by 32.7 km2) with a rate of −0.79 km2 year−1. The air temperature has increased significantly since 1976, with a rate of 0.03 °C year−1 (p < 0.05), while the precipitation slightly decreased during 1976–2015, with a rate of −0.86 mm year−1. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) increased by 27.7% from 1976 to 2015, especially after 2001 when vegetation has been promoted greatly as a result of the successful ecological protection and restoration in the Dalinor basin. The decrease in lake-areas for the DNR exhibited a negative correlation with NDVI (r = −0.397, p < 0.05) during 1976–2015. It seems that decreasing precipitation drives the reduction in lake-area, while rising temperature and vegetation greenness accelerated this decreasing trend by increasing evapotranspiration. The continuous lake shrinkage increases the ecological risks to the habitat of birds, causing a challenge to the management in the DNR.