Abstract
China launched a series of ecological restoration policies to mitigate its severe environmental challenges in the late 1990s. From the beginning, the effects and influences of the ecological restoration policies have been hotly debated. In the present study, we assessed the effects of two vital ecological restoration policies (Grain-for-Green and Grain-for-Blue) on valued ecosystem services in Shandong province. A new method based on the net primary productivity and soil erosion was developed to assess the ecosystem service value. In the areas implementing the Grain-for-Green and Grain-for-Blue policies, the ecosystem service value increased by 24.01% and 43.10% during 2000–2008, respectively. However, comparing to the average increase of ecosystem service value (46.00%) in the whole of Shandong province in the same period, Grain-for-Green and Grain-for-Blue did not significantly improve overall ecosystem services. The ecological restoration policy led to significant tradeoffs in ecosystem services. Grain-for-Green improved the ecosystem service function of nutrient cycling, organic material provision, and regulation of gases but decreased that of water conservation. Grain-for-Blue increased the water conservation function but led to a reduction in the function of soil conservation and nutrient cycling.
Highlights
Over the past 50 years, 60% of worldwide ecosystem services have degraded due to social and economic development [1]
The features of land use change in Shandong were the expansion of built-up areas, reclamation of unused land, and drastic conversions in water areas
Unused land shrank by 16.54% due to reclamation (Figure 2). Both drastic increase and decrease occurred in the water areas
Summary
Over the past 50 years, 60% of worldwide ecosystem services have degraded due to social and economic development [1]. Awakening to the severe effects of ecological degradation, the Chinese government implemented two ecological restoration policies at the end of the 1990s, that is, the Grain-for-Green policy and Grain-for-Blue policy. The Grain-for-Green policy, the largest land retirement/afforestation program in China, was launched in 1999 to mitigate land degradation (soil erosion) by returning steeply sloping cultivated land to forest area or grassland [2, 4,5,6,7]. The Grain-for-Blue policy was launched in 1998, aiming to return cultivated land to water areas, that is, relinquishing the cultivated land at the periphery of water areas [8,9,10,11]
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