Structure and Functioning of China’s Dryland Ecosystems in a Changing Environment

TY - CHAP

T1 - Structure and Functioning of China’s Dryland Ecosystems in a Changing Environment

AU - Li, Changjia

AU - Fu, Bojie

AU - Wang, Shuai

AU - Stringer, Lindsay C.

AU - Zhou, Wenxin

AU - Lu, Tong

AU - Wu, Xutong

AU - Hu, Rina

AU - Ren, Zhuobing

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Editor(s)(if applicable) and The Author(s)2024.

PY - 2024/1/1

Y1 - 2024/1/1

N2 - China has one of the largest dryland areas worldwide, covering 6.6 million km2 and supporting approximately 580 million people. Conflicting findings showing a drier China’s drylands with increasing aridity and observed greenness indicate the complexity of environmental processes, highlighting a pressing research need to improve understanding of how active dryland processes, ecosystem structure and functioning will alter. This chapter synthesizes the changes, impacts, and their drivers in China’s dryland ecosystems. Results from analyses covering the period 2000-2015 showed that 58.69% of the vegetated area exhibited an increase in vegetation green-ness, cover, and productivity, while 4.29% of those showed a decrease in all three aspects. However, 37.02% of the vegetated area showed inconsistent trends in vegeta-tion greenness, cover, and productivity, suggesting high uncertainty in estimations of vegetation dynamics in drylands. China’s drylands are nevertheless at risk of expansion and could pass an irreversible tipping point with increasing aridity, particularly in the country’s semi-arid regions. Nitrogen enrichment and overgrazing generally reduce plant species diversity. Wind erosion, water erosion, salinization, and freeze- thaw erosion are typical processes of desertification in China’s drylands. Large-scale ecological restoration projects enhance greening and ecosystem services of China’s drylands, but also impose substantial pressure on these water-limited environments. Future research is needed to examine interactions among different drivers of envi-ronmental change (e.g., the relationships between CO2 fertilization and increased aridity). Such research could usefully include complex systems approaches to link patterns and processes across spatial and time scales, and long-term experiments on physical-chemical-biological process interactions.

AB - China has one of the largest dryland areas worldwide, covering 6.6 million km2 and supporting approximately 580 million people. Conflicting findings showing a drier China’s drylands with increasing aridity and observed greenness indicate the complexity of environmental processes, highlighting a pressing research need to improve understanding of how active dryland processes, ecosystem structure and functioning will alter. This chapter synthesizes the changes, impacts, and their drivers in China’s dryland ecosystems. Results from analyses covering the period 2000-2015 showed that 58.69% of the vegetated area exhibited an increase in vegetation green-ness, cover, and productivity, while 4.29% of those showed a decrease in all three aspects. However, 37.02% of the vegetated area showed inconsistent trends in vegeta-tion greenness, cover, and productivity, suggesting high uncertainty in estimations of vegetation dynamics in drylands. China’s drylands are nevertheless at risk of expansion and could pass an irreversible tipping point with increasing aridity, particularly in the country’s semi-arid regions. Nitrogen enrichment and overgrazing generally reduce plant species diversity. Wind erosion, water erosion, salinization, and freeze- thaw erosion are typical processes of desertification in China’s drylands. Large-scale ecological restoration projects enhance greening and ecosystem services of China’s drylands, but also impose substantial pressure on these water-limited environments. Future research is needed to examine interactions among different drivers of envi-ronmental change (e.g., the relationships between CO2 fertilization and increased aridity). Such research could usefully include complex systems approaches to link patterns and processes across spatial and time scales, and long-term experiments on physical-chemical-biological process interactions.

KW - China’s drylands

KW - Climate change

KW - Desertification

KW - Ecological conservation and restoration

KW - Land use change

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85206174899&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/978-981-99-9375-8_12

DO - 10.1007/978-981-99-9375-8_12

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85206174899

SN - 9789819993741

SP - 391

EP - 424

BT - Dryland Social-Ecological Systems in Changing Environments

PB - Springer Nature Switzerland

ER -