The impact of socioeconomic factors on vegetation restoration in karst regions: A perspective beyond climate and ecological engineering

Abstract

Socioeconomic factors are important parameters that affect vegetation changes in karst areas. Previous studies primarily focused on ecological engineering when analyzing the impact of human activities on vegetation restoration, whereas the impact of socioeconomic factors has been less studied. The study employs structural equation modeling and geographically weighted regression to quantitatively assess the impact of socioeconomic factors on vegetation dynamics within karst regions, with a focus on the county level. The results showed a significant upward trend in both the Enhanced Vegetation Index and Net Primary Productivity across China's humid karst regions from 2000 to 2020. Among the socioeconomic factors, non-farm economy and rural economy had a positive effect on vegetation change, with maximum path coefficients of the structural equation model of 0.79 and 0.64, respectively; whereas population pressure had a negative impact with a minimum path coefficient of −0.80. Over time, the positive impact of rural economy on vegetation restoration showed an increasing trend, and the path coefficient increased from-0.92 to 0.64; in turn, non-farm economy and population pressure showed a decreasing trend. Moreover, because they were affected by the heterogeneity of the karst mountain environment, the impact of various socioeconomic factors on vegetation restoration had obvious spatial non-stationarity. The results of this study will promote our understanding of the mechanism underlying vegetation change in humid karst areas and provide scientific reference for ensuring the sustainability of the ecological effects in these areas.