TY - JOUR
T1 - Linking wind erosion to ecosystem services in drylands
T2 - a landscape ecological approach
AU - Zhao, Yuanyuan
AU - Wu, Jianguo
AU - He, Chunyang
AU - Ding, Guodong
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Programs of China (2014CB954302 and 2014CB954303) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41401095).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
PY - 2017/12/1
Y1 - 2017/12/1
N2 - Context: Wind erosion is a widespread environmental problem in the world’s arid landscapes, which threatens the sustainability of ecosystem services in these regions. Objectives: We investigated how wind erosion and key ecosystem services changed concurrently and what major biophysical and socioeconomic factors were responsible for these changes in a dryland area of China. Methods: Based on remote sensing data, field measurements, and modeling, we quantified the spatiotemporal patterns of both wind erosion and four key ecosystem services (soil conservation, crop production, meat production, and carbon storage) in the Mu Us Sandy Land in northern China during 2000–2013. Linear regression was used to explore possible relationships between wind erosion and ecosystem services. Results: From 2000 to 2013, wind erosion decreased by as much as 60% and the four ecosystem services all increased substantially. These trends were attributable to vegetation recovery due mainly to government-aided ecological restoration projects and, to a lesser degree, slightly increasing precipitation and decreasing wind speed during the second half of the study period. The maximum soil loss dropped an order of magnitude when vegetation cover increased from 10% to 30%, halved again when vegetation increased from 30 to 40%, and showed little change when vegetation increased beyond 60%. Conclusions: Our study indicates that vegetation cover has nonlinear and threshold effects on wind erosion through constraining the maximum soil loss, which further affects dryland ecosystem services. These findings have important implications for ecological restoration and ecosystem management in dryland landscapes in China and beyond.
AB - Context: Wind erosion is a widespread environmental problem in the world’s arid landscapes, which threatens the sustainability of ecosystem services in these regions. Objectives: We investigated how wind erosion and key ecosystem services changed concurrently and what major biophysical and socioeconomic factors were responsible for these changes in a dryland area of China. Methods: Based on remote sensing data, field measurements, and modeling, we quantified the spatiotemporal patterns of both wind erosion and four key ecosystem services (soil conservation, crop production, meat production, and carbon storage) in the Mu Us Sandy Land in northern China during 2000–2013. Linear regression was used to explore possible relationships between wind erosion and ecosystem services. Results: From 2000 to 2013, wind erosion decreased by as much as 60% and the four ecosystem services all increased substantially. These trends were attributable to vegetation recovery due mainly to government-aided ecological restoration projects and, to a lesser degree, slightly increasing precipitation and decreasing wind speed during the second half of the study period. The maximum soil loss dropped an order of magnitude when vegetation cover increased from 10% to 30%, halved again when vegetation increased from 30 to 40%, and showed little change when vegetation increased beyond 60%. Conclusions: Our study indicates that vegetation cover has nonlinear and threshold effects on wind erosion through constraining the maximum soil loss, which further affects dryland ecosystem services. These findings have important implications for ecological restoration and ecosystem management in dryland landscapes in China and beyond.
KW - Constraint effect
KW - Drylands
KW - Ecosystem services
KW - Mu Us Sandy Land, Inner Mongolia
KW - Wind erosion
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U2 - 10.1007/s10980-017-0585-9
DO - 10.1007/s10980-017-0585-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85033386907
SN - 0921-2973
VL - 32
SP - 2399
EP - 2417
JO - Landscape Ecology
JF - Landscape Ecology
IS - 12
ER -