Ecosystem Water Use Efficiency in the Three-North Region of China Based on Long-Term Satellite Data

The past and future of ecosystem restoration in China

For decades, China has implemented restoration programs on a large scale, thanks to its capacity to set policy and mobilize funding resources. An understanding of China's restoration achievements and remaining challenges will help to guide future efforts to restore 30% of its diverse ecosystems under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Here we summarize the major transitions in China's approach to ecosystem restoration since the 1970s, with a focus on the underlying motivations for restoration, approaches to ecosystem management, and financing mechanisms. Whereas China's restoration efforts were predominantly guided by the delivery of certain ecosystem functions and services in earlier decades, more recently it has come to emphasize the restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity. Accordingly, the focal ecosystems, approaches, and financing mechanisms of restoration have also been considerably diversified. This evolution is largely guided by the accumulation of scientific evidence and past experiences. We highlight the key challenges facing China's restoration efforts and propose future directions to improve restoration effectiveness, with regard to goal setting, monitoring, stakeholder involvement, adaptive management, resilience under climate change, and financing.

Spatiotemporal changes and driving factors of vegetation in 14 different climatic regions in the global from 1981 to 2018

Climate change affects the change of vegetation, and the analysis of vegetation change and its drivers in different globe climate zones is important for ecological conservation, energy balances, and climate change in different global climate zones. Based on the vegetation leaf area index (LAI) and climate factor datasets, this paper uses an integrated empirical model decomposition, sensitivity rate, contribution rate, and geographic detector analysis method to study the vegetation drivers and their changes in 14 different climate zones around the globe from 1981 to 2018. The results showed that (1) Vegetation changes were sensitive to precipitation and evapotranspiration in arid climate zones and to temperature and soil temperature in cold climate zones. In the tundra climate zone, the sensitivity of vegetation change to temperature was higher than that to precipitation and evapotranspiration. (2) Soil moisture has the highest contribution to vegetation change, and the areas with absolute contribution rates over 60% account for 50.26% of the total area of global vegetation cover. The areas with high contributions of temperature and soil temperature to the LAI are mainly distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, which indicates that temperature has a high contribution to vegetation change in low-temperature environments. (3) The areas with significant increasing trends for the global vegetation LAIs accounted for approximately 15.32% of the total global vegetation cover (slope ≥ 0.01), which are mainly located in equatorial savannahs with dry winters, warm temperate climates with dry winters, and warm temperate climates with fully humid climatic zones. (4) The LAIs were dominated by medium-high fluctuations and sustainable increasing changes, which accounted for 61.27% and 69.34% of the total global vegetation cover area, respectively. (5) Globally, the driving factors influencing LAI changes are specific humidity, temperature, soil temperature, evapotranspiration, precipitation, and soil moisture in descending order, with the largest interaction effect of specific humidity and soil moisture on LAI changes. This research provides a scientific basis for vegetation change monitoring, driving mechanisms, and ecological protection in different climate regions around the globe.

Technological Breakthrough for the Afforestation of Populus euphratica in the Mu Us Desert in China

The Mu Us Desert (MUD) is one of the four largest sandy lands in China. On 22 April 2020, the Shaanxi Forestry Bureau announced that the desertification land control rate in Yulin reached 93.24%, which means that the Mu Us Desert was about to “disappear” from the territory of Shaanxi. However, the problem of biological diversity, mostly for Pinus sylvestris and shrubs in the Mu Us Desert, remains serious. In order to consolidate the current forest conservation efforts, Populus euphratica has been considered an ideal candidate since the 1950s. However, the low survival rate and conservation rate of Populus euphratica in the MUD led us to perform further large-scale introduction for over 70 years. In this study, by using root control seedling technology, the survival and the conservation rate of Populus euphratica were increased to more than 90%. This study makes possible the introduction of Populus euphratica in the MUD, and the successful introduction of Populus euphratica will provide a new barrier for forest ecosystem stability in the desertification control project in the Yulin area.