Vegetation cover dynamics and its constraint effect on ecosystem services on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau under ecological restoration projects.

Ecological restoration projects (ERPs) are implemented worldwide to restore degraded ecosystems and promote ecosystem sustainability. In recent years, a series of ERPs have been implemented to enhance vegetation cover in the unique alpine ecosystems of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). However, the current assessment of the ecological benefits of ERPs is relatively single, and the scale and extent of future ecological restoration project implementation cannot be determined.

Multilevel ecological compensation policy design based on ecosystem service flow: A case study of carbon sequestration services in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Ecological compensation is an effective means to reconcile the imbalance of eco-social development between regions and promote enthusiasm for ecological environmental protection. There is some conformity between the theory of ecosystem service flow and ecological compensation, which provides new technical support for the formulation of ecological compensation policy. This study took the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau as the research area, adopted the breaking point model to obtain the spatial characteristics of carbon sequestration flow, and formulated a multilevel ecological compensation policy with Tibet as the design object.

Effects of Climate Change and Fencing on Forage Nutrition Quality of Alpine Grasslands in the Northern Tibet.

How climate change and fencing will affect forage nutrition quality of alpine grasslands is still unknown in the Northern Tibet. Here, we reported the effects of climate change and fencing on forage nutrition quality (i.e.

Assessing trade-offs among productive, economic, and environmental indicators of forage systems in southern Tibetan crop-livestock integration.

Fostering crop-livestock integration via crop-forage rotation provides opportunities to cope with land degradation, feed deficit, and agropastoral sustainability. Farmers' preferences for forage options are influenced by economic benefit, environmental preference, and productive performance. However, there is little information available on evaluating multiple trade-offs of forage systems for the design of crop-forage rotations.

Warming homogenizes apparent temperature sensitivity of ecosystem respiration.

Warming-induced carbon loss through terrestrial ecosystem respiration () is likely getting stronger in high latitudes and cold regions because of the more rapid warming and higher temperature sensitivity of ( ). However, it is not known whether the spatial relationship between and temperature also holds temporally under a future warmer climate. Here, we analyzed apparent values derived from multiyear observations at 74 FLUXNET sites spanning diverse climates and biomes.

Assessing differences in the response of forest aboveground biomass and composition under climate change in subtropical forest transition zone.

The subtropical forest transition zone in southern China is a typical transition zone with high coverage and diverse vegetation. Projected climate change will affect physiological processes of trees, which would consequently alter the forest aboveground biomass (AGB) and composition at broad spatial scales. However, spatially heterogeneous responses may also be shaped by climate change, succession, and harvesting in different forest habitats.

Quantifying ecosystem service trade-offs for plantation forest management to benefit provisioning and regulating services.

There is increasing interest worldwide regarding managing plantation forests in a manner that maintains or improves timber production, enhances ecosystem services, and promotes long-term sustainability of forest resources. We selected the Gan River Basin, the largest catchment of Poyang Lake and a region with a typical plantation distribution in South China, as the study region. We evaluated and mapped four important forest ecosystem services, including wood volume, carbon storage, water yield, and soil retention at a 30 × 30 m resolution, then quantified their trade-offs and synergies at the county and subwatershed scales.

Nonlinear variations of forest leaf area index over China during 1982-2010 based on EEMD method.

Variations in leaf area index (LAI) are critical to research on forest ecosystem structure and function, especially carbon and water cycle, and their responses to climate change. Using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method and global inventory modeling and mapping studies (GIMMS) LAI3g dataset from 1982 to 2010, we analyzed the nonlinear feature and spatial difference of forest LAI variability over China for the past 29 years in this paper. Results indicated that the national-averaged forest LAI was characterized by quasi-3- and quasi-7-year oscillations, which generally exhibited a rising trend with an increasing rate.

Predicting the responses of forest distribution and aboveground biomass to climate change under RCP scenarios in southern China.

In the past three decades, our global climate has been experiencing unprecedented warming. This warming has and will continue to significantly influence the structure and function of forest ecosystems. While studies have been conducted to explore the possible responses of forest landscapes to future climate change, the representative concentration pathways (RCPs) scenarios under the framework of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) have not been widely used in quantitative modeling research of forest landscapes.

[Spatiotemporal variation of water source supply service in Three Rivers Source Area of China based on InVEST model].

The Three Rivers Source Area is the largest ecological function region of water source supply and conservation in China. As affected by a variety of driving factors, the ecosystems in this region are seriously degraded, giving definite impacts on the water source supply service. This paper approached the variation patterns of precipitation and runoff coefficient from 1981 to 2010, quantitatively estimated the water source supply of the ecosystems in the region from 1980 to 2005 based on InVEST model, and analyzed the spatiotemporal variation pattern and its causes of the water source supply in different periods.

[Spatial pattern of vegetation landscape diversity in longitudinal Range-Gorge Region, southwestern China].

Based on the China 1:1000000 vegetation type map, and by using GIS spatial analysis, the spatial pattern of major vegetation landscape diversity indices and its relationships with environmental factors in Longitudinal Range-Gorge Region (LRGR) were analyzed. The proper scale for studying the vegetation landscape diversity in LRGR was 2000 m. In the study region, an obvious regional difference was observed in the vegetation landscape diversity indices, exhibiting typical longitudinal "corridor" and latitudinal "barrier" characteristics.

Modeling change-pattern-value dynamics on land use: an integrated GIS and artificial neural networks approach.

The use of spatial methods to detect and characterize changes in land use has been attracting increasing attention from researchers. The objectives of this article were to formulate the dynamics of land use on the temporal and spatial dimensions from the perspectives of the Change-Pattern-Value (CPV) and driving mechanism, based on multitemporal remote sensing data and socioeconomic data. The Artificial Neural Networks were used to identify the factors driving changes in land use.