Comment on essd-2022-222

Abstract

Soil conservation capacity (SC) is defined as the ability of the ecosystem to control soil erosion and protect soil function. A long-term and high-resolution estimation of soil conservation is urgent for ecological assessment and land management on a large scale. Here, a 300-m resolution SC dataset in China is established from 1992 to 2019 based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model. The RUSLE modelling was conducted based on five key parameters, including the rainfall erosivity (interpolation of daily rainfall), land cover management (provincial data), conservation practices (weighted by terrain and crop types), topography (30 m), and soil properties (250 m). The dataset agrees with previous measurements (R2 > 0.5 in all the basins) and other regional simulations. The results show that China's SC decreased before 2003 and then increased up to now. The SC change exhibits the ecological effects of soil and water conservation policies in China, such as the Conversion of Farmland to Forests and Grass (Grain-for-Green), which unfolded many movements after 2000. Compared with current studies, the dataset has long-term, large-scale, and relatively high-resolution characteristics. This dataset will serve as a base to open out the mechanism of SC variations in China and could help assess the ecological effects of land management policies. This dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.11888/Terre.tpdc.272668 (Li et al., 2022).