Contribution of climate change and vegetation restoration to interannual variability of evapotranspiration in the agro-pastoral ecotone in northern China

•Nine common ET products in the APENC were evaluated, and GLEAM was found to perform the best.•Vegetation greening and climate change accelerated ET variations in the APENC from 1982 to 2017, with a trend of 1.11 mm/y.•Precipitation and LAI controlled the increasing trend of ET from 1982 to 2017, with PRE before 2000, and LAI after 2000, respectively.•Temperature exhibited the highest indirect effect on ET increase through accelerating LAI.