title: Impacts of changes in climate and landscape pattern on ecosystem services.
abstract: The restoration of degraded vegetation can effectively improve ecosystem services, increase human well-being, and promote regional sustainable development. Understanding the changing trends in ecosystem services and their drivers is an important step in informing decision makers for the development of reasonable landscape management measures. From 2001 to 2014, we analyzed the changing trends in five critical ecosystem services in the Xilingol Grassland, which is typical of grasslands in North China, including net primary productivity (NPP), soil conservation (SC), soil loss due to wind (SL), water yield (WY) and water retention (WR). Additionally, we quantified how climatic factors and landscape patterns affect the five ecosystem services on both annual and seasonal time scales. Overall, the results indicated that vegetation restoration can effectively improve the five grassland ecosystem services, and precipitation (PPT) is the most critical climatic factor. The impact of changes in the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was most readily detectable on the annual time scale, whereas the impact of changes in landscape pattern was most readily detectable on the seasonal time scale. A win-win situation in terms of grassland ecosystem services (e.g., vegetation productivity, SC, WR and reduced SL) can be achieved by increasing grassland aggregation, partitioning the largest grasslands, dividing larger areas of farmland into smaller patches, and increasing the area of appropriate forest stands. Our work may aid policymakers in developing regional landscape management schemes.
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: hrf@mail.bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Ruifang
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hao
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: dyyucas@163.com.
authors.forename: Deyong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: alesenrobin@163.com.
authors.forename: Yupeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: 200911191011@mail.bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: qjmwilson@163.com.
authors.forename: Jianmin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qiao
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: wangxue2140306@163.com.
authors.forename: Xue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: 201521480018@mail.bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jinshen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Du
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D002980:Climate; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D017753:Ecosystem; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Dynamics; Grassland restoration; Land use/cover change; Landscape index; Temporal scale; Trend analysis