128 Results Found

Southwest China is an ecologically fragile area with a high proportion of karstland and large variations in terrain, and it can be greatly affected by land use change. From 2000 to 2020, with the acceleration of urbanization in the whole country, the...

The Green-for-Grain program (GGP) is the largest environmental restoration program in China. It is effective in controlling land desertification but at the same time is highly affected by regional differences. Ecosystem health, as an important indica...

The Chinese government introduced six ecological restoration programs to improve its natural environment. Although these programs have proven successful in improving local environmental conditions, some studies have questioned their effectiveness whe...

The Grain for Green Program (GGP), one of the world’s largest soil and water conservation initiatives, has been implemented in China as a representative payment for environmental service program. This study aims to evaluate the ecosystem servic...

Ecological engineering is a widely used strategy to address environmental degradation and enhance human well-being. A quantitative assessment of the impacts of ecological engineering on ecosystem services (ESs) is a prerequisite for designing inclusi...

Evaluating the impact of an ecological restoration program on ecosystem services is crucial, given the role of such a program in boosting sustainable ecosystem management. This study examines the impact of one of the large-scale ecological restoratio...

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) is an important ecological project in China that was implemented to tackle serious soil erosion and forest loss for sustainable development. Investigating landscape change is an efficient way to monitor and assess th...

In recent decades, climate change has affected vegetation growth in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated spatial and temporal patterns of vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau’s Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region in central China using MODIS-NDVI data f...

The Fen River Basin (FRB), an ecologically fragile region in China, exemplifies the intricate interplay between vegetation dynamics and both climatic and human-driven factors. This study leverages a 40-year (1982–2022) dataset, utilizing the ke...

Drought affects the growth and productivity of vegetation, and the analysis of drought resistance of vegetation can help ecological and environmental protection and sustainable development in drought-prone areas. The Loess Plateau (LP) is a drought-p...

Implementation of the Grain for Green program (GGP) intensifies land use/cover change (LUCC) in the loess hilly-gully region. Clarifying the response of LUCC to the GGP and its driving forces are basic premises to implement the GGP more effectively f...

Large-scale deforestation and abandoned planting will bring about the destruction of the ecological environment and the deterioration of the climate. In 1999, China initiated its “Grain for Green” Program (GGP) to improve the ecological e...

Net primary production (NPP) serves as a crucial indicator of the ecosystem’s capacity to capture atmospheric CO₂. Gaining insights into the dynamics of NPP and its driving mechanisms is pivotal for optimizing ecosystem carbon sink resource man...

Ecological restoration programs are expected to control environmental deterioration and enhance ecosystem functions under a scenario of increasing human disturbance. The largest ecological restoration program ever implemented in China, the first roun...

The Eastern Sichuan Region (ESR) is one of the key pilot regions for Grain for Green Program (GGP) implementation in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River basin in China. Therefore, monitoring the effect of the GGP on the ecosystem in the ESR is imp...

Natural ecosystems of the West Liao River basin (WLRB) in northeast China have been damaged by both natural and human factors from the 1990s. Since 2000, China’s Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) has been widely adopted with the aim of improving e...

The Grain for Green program in China, a nationwide cropland set-aside program aimed at soil erosion prevention and poverty alleviation, was begun in 1999 and quickly expanded to 25 provinces, covering 32 million households. Its effects on participati...

Most previous studies aim to predict ecosystem sustainability from the perspective of a sole human or natural system and have frequently failed to achieve their desired outcome. Based on the coupled human and natural system (CHANS) and its interactio...

Conservation set-asides face a trade-off between soil erosion control and grain security. Using the Grain for Green Program (GGP) in China’s Loess Plateau as a case study, this study aims to reveal the main source of productivity improvements t...

This study provides an empirical analysis of household technical efficiency and its determinant factors (especially conservation payments) in the context of the Grain for Green program. On the basis of a sample of 225 farm households on the Loess Pla...

Since the launch of the Grain for Green (GFG) program in 1999, the Loess Plateau has undergone significant vegetation changes. However, the driving mechanisms behind these changes in the post-GFG period remain insufficiently understood. This study an...

Green initiatives are popular mechanisms globally to enhance environmental and human wellbeing. However, multiple green initiatives, when overlapping geographically and targeting the same participants, may interact with each other, giving rise to wha...

Decades of reckless deforestation have caused serious soil erosion and land desertification issues in the Loess Plateau (LP). “Grain for Green” Program (GFGP), one of the world’s largest ecological restoration projects, is crucial t...

The Grain for Green (GfG) program is an afforestation project created by the Chinese Government to protect the environment. Farmers who participate in GfG return farmland to forest. Losing arable land means losing an income source, so farmers have to...

The accurate habitat suitability evaluation of forest species is vital for forest resource management and conservation. Therefore, the previously published thresholds of soil organic carbon (SOC) contents for the six main forest species were used to...

Within the context of global desertification trends in arid regions, advancing afforestation and sand stabilization efforts are not only vital for human survival but are also key considerations in addressing the challenges of climate change and achie...

Aboveground biomass (AGB) serves as a crucial indicator of the effectiveness of the Grain for Green Program (GGP), and its accurate estimation is essential for evaluating forest health and carbon sink capacity. However, due to the dominance of sparse...

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) initiated by Chinese government significantly impacts mitigating environmental degradation. Soil water resources probably constrain large-scale vegetation restoration projects in arid and semi-arid regions. Character...

The effects of forest restoration on ecosystem services and their trade-offs are increasingly discussed by environmental managers and ecologists, but few demonstrations have analyzed ecosystem service trade-offs with a view to informing afforestation...

As a large-scale afforestation initiative, the Grain for Green (GFG) program was implemented for more than decade in the hilly Loess Plateau of Northern Shaanxi starting in 1999 and inevitably affected plant biomass production. This study evaluated t...

The importance of accurately monitoring rangeland degradation dynamics over decades is increasing in Linxia rangeland, the birthplace of the Yellow River in China. Since 2000, the Chinese government has implemented the “Grain for Green” program and e...

The Grain for Green Program (GFGP) plays a critical role in enhancing watershed vegetation cover. Analyzing changes in vegetation cover provides significant practical value in guiding ecological conservation and restoration in vulnerable regions. Thi...

The Inner Mongolia segment of the Yellow River basin (IMYRB) is a typical area for ecological restoration in China. At the end of the 20th century, influenced by climate and human activities, such as mining, grazing, and farmland abandonment, the eco...

Regrowth of forests is expected to be an important driver in the large uptake of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions by the terrestrial biosphere. Yet estimates of carbon sink capacity in mid-high latitude regrowth forests still remain unclear. The Loess Pla...

Understanding the effect of land use and land cover (LULC) type change on watershed hydrological response is essential for adopting applicable measures to control floods. In China, the Grain to Green Program (GTGP) and the Natural Forest Conservation...

The Loess Plateau (LP) is a typical climate-sensitive and ecologically delicate area in China. Clarifying the vegetation–climate interaction in the LP over 40+ years, particularly pre- and post-Grain to Green Program (GTGP) implementation, is c...

Climate change and human activities significantly affected environmental changes in drylands. However, the relative roles remain unclear regarding these factors’ effects on environment changes in drylands. Herein, we analyzed vegetation change...

Taking Longnan, in the western Qinling Mountains region of Gansu province, China, as our study area, and using the Sixth National Population Census alongside household survey data, we analyze changes in household livelihoods, and consequent regional...

Water stored deep in the soil profile is the primary bio-available reservoir for regional vegetation in the semiarid Loess Plateau of China. However, the planting of introduced shrubs over many years as part of the “Grain to Green Program (GGP)” has...

Soil microorganisms play pivotal roles in terrestrial ecological processes. However, how soil microbial biomass and community characteristics respond to changes in land utilization in karst regions remains largely unknown. The present study investiga...

The Qinling-Daba Mountains in central China (also known as the north–south transitional zone) comprise an ideal area to study land cover change, climate change, and human activities. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) change and...

This study is an overview of the effectiveness and institutional challenges of China’s Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP). The SLCP is the Chinese government’s largest Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) program and one of the largest PES progr...

Understanding the tradeoff and synergy among ecosystem services (ESs) and their influencing factors is a prerequisite for simultaneously managing multiple ESs and holds significant importance for achieving harmonious regional development between huma...

Grain supply chain transportation problem is a nontrivial and intractable issue for many developing countries. Grain as a bulk commodity is usually transported by bulk carriers. By taking into account the special condition of Ukraine, we proposed the...

The Southern Shaanxi Province, an important ecological security barrier area in central China, is the primary water source of the south-to-north water transfer project in China. However, severe soil erosion seriously affects the safety of regional ec...

The global land surface cover is undergoing extensive changes in the context of global change, especially in the Loess Plateau, where ecological restoration policies have been vigorously implemented since 2000. Evaluating the impact of these policies...

China’s Conversion of Cropland to Forests Program (CCFP) is the world’s largest afforestation-based Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) program, having retired and afforested over 24 million ha involving 32 million rural households. Prior research...

As a critical ecological barrier and key dryland agricultural zone in China, the Loess Plateau is faced with acute tensions between food security risks arising from cropland abandonment (CA) and the imperatives of ecological conservation. Yet, existi...

Afforestation programs have huge potential to store carbon, thereby contributing to mitigate climate change. However, the voluntary acceptance by landowners crucially depends on their economic outcome. We (i) assess the carbon sequestration potential...

Karst regions, characterized by thin soil layers, severe rocky desertification, and fragile vegetation, hold significant scientific value for achieving China’s “dual-carbon” goals. This study focuses on Zhijin County in Guizhou Prov...