Abstract
Land degradation is a major threat to the sustainability of human habitation, and it is essential to assess it quantitatively. Assessment of the human-induced aspect is especially important for planning appropriate prevention measures. This paper used the Three-North Shelter Forest Program region as the study area, and assessed the land degradation dynamic using a time series of summed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) based on a trend analysis of the Theil-Sen slope and Mann-Kendall test. The human-induced land degradation was separated from degradation driven by climate using the meteorological dataset through the residual trend (RESTREND) method for the period 1982–2006. The results showed that (1) the NDVI in the study area mainly exhibited an increasing trend, approximately 13.00% of the study area experienced significantly positive NDVI trends and 6.20% showed decline. Furthermore, (2) the correlation between the summed NDVI and precipitation was higher than the correlation between NDVI and temperature, suggesting that precipitation was the most essential factor that impacted NDVI dynamic in the study area; (3) The significant trends of vegetation by anthropogenic disturbances were detected, which were significant positive and negative trends of 11.93% and 6.19%, respectively. All of these findings enrich our knowledge of human activities that impact land degradation in arid or semi-arid regions and provide a scientific basis for the management of ecological restoration programs.
Highlights
Land degradation is one of the most serious global environmental issues of this time period
This paper explored the variation in trend of vegetation production based a long-term series of inter-annual AVHRR normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) in the Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP) region of China
By analyzing the relationships between climate factors and NDVI time series over the last 25 years, we distinguished the areas of productivity change impacted by human activities from those affected by climate dynamics
Summary
Land degradation is one of the most serious global environmental issues of this time period It can be defined as the persistent/long-term reduction of ecosystem services and vegetation productivity of the land, and it affects the lives of large numbers of people [1,2,3,4]. This phenomenon includes diverse processes, involving changes in plant species composition, soil erosion, and the reduction of the land’s productive potential [2,5]. Natural factors include extreme and periodic climatic variations; aridity and droughts, mainly induced by precipitation and temperature in arid or semi-arid regions [9,10,11]
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