Assessing direct and indirect impacts of human activities on natural habitats in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from 2000 to 2020

Abstract

The natural habitats of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) are fragile and vulnerable to human activities. Moreover, human activities in the QTP have increased rapidly over the past few decades. Thus, it is essential to effectively evaluate the impacts of human activities on the natural habitats in the QTP. However, existing studies have not adequately quantified the comprehensive impacts of human activities. Moreover, there is a lack of analysis of the direct and indirect impacts of human activities. In this study, we used the human footprint index to reflect comprehensive human activities and quantitatively analysed both direct and indirect impacts in the QTP at multiple scales. The results indicated that the human footprint in the QTP increased rapidly by 6.08% from 2000 to 2020. The increased human footprint resulted in habitat quality losses of 0.75%, including 0.41% of direct impacts and 0.34% of indirect impacts. The high-intensity human footprint had the greatest impacts on natural habitats, resulting in a 0.43% reduction in habitat quality, which accounted for 57.40% of the total losses in the QTP. The adverse impacts of human activities on natural habitats further hampered the achievement of biodiversity conservation targets on the QTP. Therefore, we recommend that future efforts in the QTP should focus on the impacts of human activities on natural habitats, especially the impacts of high-intensity human activities.