Assessing the ecological effectiveness of Sloping Land Conversion Programme to identify vegetation restoration types: A case study of Northern Shaanxi Loess Plateau, China

作者：Zhenmin Ding, Shunbo Yao · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.109671 · 被引用次数：28 · 研究领域：Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Remote Sensing in Agriculture、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

China's Sloping Land Conversion Programme (SLCP) improves the vegetation at the expense of a lot of water and aggravates the drought in arid and semi-arid regions. Identifying vegetation restoration types based on their ecological effectiveness is important for alleviating the conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans. This study used the treatment effect model to estimate the marginal contribution of SLCP towards vegetation restoration in the Northern Shaanxi Loess Plateau. Additionally, we built a relative advantage index (RAI) for identifying vegetation restoration types based on the assessment of SLCP's ecological effectiveness. After implementing the SLCP, land use experienced significant transitions, and the vegetation was extensively improved in the Northern Shaanxi Loess Plateau. The farmland changed into forestland and grassland extended to over 985.608 km2 and 3021.526 km2 respectively, and the average normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) increased by 35.818 % from 2000 to 2015. The SLCP has a large positive effect on vegetation, and the marginal contribution of conversion farmland to forest (CFF) is higher than that of conversion farmland to grassland (CFG). Furthermore, the RAI can effectively distinguish vegetation restoration types in forest-grass transition zones. The suitable afforestation areas with a RAI of more than 1 account for 14.101 %, and are mainly distributed in the south of the Northern Shaanxi Plateau while others ar...