Abstract
Fighting land degradation of semi-arid and climate-sensitive grasslands are among the most urgent tasks of current eco-political agenda. Particularly, northern China and Mongolia are prone to climate-induced surface transformations, which were reinforced by the heavily increased numbers of livestock during the 20th century. Extensive overgrazing and resource exploitation amplified regional climate change effects and triggered intensified land degradation that forced policy-driven interventions to prevent desertification. In the past, however, the regions have been subject to continuous shifts in environmental and socio-cultural and political conditions, which makes it particularly difficult to distinguish into regional anthropogenic impact and global climate change effects. This article presents analyses of historical written sources, palaeoenvironmental data, and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) temporal series from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to compare landcover change during the Little Ice Age (LIA) and current spectral greening trends over the period 2001–2020. Results show that decreasing precipitation and temperature records triggered increased land degradation during the late 17th century in the transition zone from northern China and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to Mongolia. From current climate change perspectives, modern vegetation shows enhanced physical vegetation response related to an increase in precipitation (Ptotal) and temperature (T). Vegetation response is strongly related to Ptotal and T and an increase in physical plant condition indicates local to regional grassland recovery compared to the past 20-year average.
Highlights
Climate and land cover changes, heavy grazing, and agricultural and resource exploitation contribute significantly to land degradation and desertification processes in sensitive arid and semi-arid regions of Earth [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The transition zone from northern China to Inner Mongolia and Mongolia is characterized by a pronounced landcover gradient from moderate forested areas in the characterized by a pronounced landcover gradient from moderate forested areas in the south and the south-east to increasingly semi-arid and arid conditions towards the south and the south-east to increasingly semi-arid and arid conditions towards the MongoMongolian Plateau and the extensive grasslands of Inner Mongolia and Mongolia (Figure lian Plateau and the extensive grasslands of Inner Mongolia and Mongolia (Figure 3)
The results presented in this article show that over the entire study area, there is a significant increase in spectral greening and interannual vegetation variability, which is correlated to an increase in precipitation and temperature. These results show that decreasing grassland degradation during the 21st century can be related to climate change and increasing precipitation
Summary
Climate and land cover changes, heavy grazing, and agricultural and resource exploitation contribute significantly to land degradation and desertification processes in sensitive arid and semi-arid regions of Earth [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Seasonal vegetation dynamics control transhumance (seasonal nomadic), socio-cultural, and socio-economic strategies, which nowadays have turned into politically motivated intensified sedentary patterns with regional and supra-regional environmental overstraining. The system-inherent interactions of land degradation, climate forcing, anthropogenic impact, and ecological functionalities have been recently emphasized by multiple authors, who suggested complexity within physically, and socio-culturally controlled systems [5,12,16,17]. China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Mongolia have experienced massive political and economic development during the past decades, which enabled a strong transformation of the social, rural, and environmental life [18,19,20,21,22], followed by governmental grassland restoration projects and policies to prevent desertification [23,24,25]
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