Modeling the impact of urbanization and climate changes on terrestrial vegetation productivity in China by a neighborhood substitution analysis

•Neighborhood substitution modeling can be applied to isolate the effects of urbanization and climate changes.•Urban expansion reduced regional NPP in urban areas in China due to the land cover changes.•Climate changes offset NPP decrease induced by urbanization in China.•Residual effect derived from the model was found to explain the rest part of the impact on NPP.