Changes in land use and agricultural production structure before and after the implementation of grain for green program in Western China — taking two typical counties as examples

Ecological engineering is a widely used strategy to address environmental degradation and enhance human well-being. A quantitative assessment of the impacts of ecological engineering on ecosystem services (ESs) is a prerequisite for designing inclusive and sustainable engineering programs. In order to strengthen national ecological security, the Chinese government has implemented the world’s largest ecological project since 1999, the Grain for Green Program (GFGP). We used a professional model to evaluate the key ESs in Lvliang City. Scenario analysis was used to quantify the contribution of the GFGP to changes in ESs and the impacts of trade-offs/synergy. We used spatial regression to identify the main drivers of ES trade-offs. We found that: (1) From 2000 to 2018, the contribution rates of the GFGP to changes in carbon storage (CS), habitat quality (HQ), water yield (WY), and soil conservation (SC) were 140.92%, 155.59%, −454.48%, and 92.96%, respectively. GFGP compensated for the negative impacts of external environmental pressure on CS and HQ, and significantly improved CS, HQ, and SC, but at the expense of WY. (2) The GFGP promotes the synergistic development of CS, HQ, and SC, and also intensifies the trade-off relationships between WY and CS, WY and HQ, and WY and SC. (3) Land use change and urbanization are significantly positively correlated with the WY–CS, WY–HQ, and WY–SC trade-offs, while increases in NDVI helped alleviate these trade-offs. (4) Geographically weighted regression explained 90.8%, 94.2%, and 88.2% of the WY–CS, WY–HQ, and WY–SC trade-offs, respectively. We suggest that the ESs’ benefits from the GFGP can be maximized by controlling the intensity of land use change, optimizing the development of urbanization, and improving the effectiveness of afforestation. This general method of quantifying the impact of ecological engineering on ESs can act as a reference for future ecological restoration plans and decision-making in China and across the world.

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Distinguishing ecological outcomes of pathways in Grain for Green Program in the subtropical areas of China

Environmental Research Letters ◽

10.1088/1748-9326/ac444c ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sijing Qiu ◽

Jian Peng

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Gross Primary Production ◽

Equation Model ◽

Guizhou Province ◽

Grain For Green ◽

Grain For Green Program ◽

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ◽

Reforestation Program

Abstract Effective forestation policies are urgently required across the globe under the initiative of UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Rather than simply planting trees, such initiatives involve complex components of societal and biophysical systems. However, the underlying pathways by which forestation influences the ecological outcomes are not well understood, especially lacking a unified quantification framework. In this study, such a framework was developed to reveal the pathways in which reforestation programs influenced ecological outcomes through identifying the linkages among reforestation efforts, societal changes, land system changes, and ecological outcomes. The framework was applied in the reforestation program of Grain for Green Program (GFGP), to explore that how the GFGP influenced vegetation dynamics and ecosystem functioning in Guizhou Province of China through direct and indirect pathways. Two independent remote-sensing-based indicators: the enhanced vegetation index (EVI), derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and gross primary production (GPP), obtained from the Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) fine resolution dataset GOSIF, were combined with inventory data and land use maps to detect changes in social and ecological outcomes. Using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) to perform the framework, the results showed that the GFGP positively contributed to the increasing greenness and GPP of the study area through the direct conservation pathway. Although the implementation of GFGP encouraged outmigration and led to a decrease in farmland area, GFGP on greenness and GPP showed negative indirect effects because of the difficulty of reforestation during land-use conversion from farmland to forest land. This study revealed divergent impacts of the reforestation program through multiple pathways, which could provide valuable information for other parts of the globe to design ecological restoration policies more precisely.

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Spatial-Temporal Changes in Ecological Risk of Land use Before and After Grain-for-Green Policy in Zhengning County, Gansu Province

Journal of Resources and Ecology ◽

10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2013.01.005 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 36-42 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Shen Jianxiu ◽

Wang Xiuhong

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecological Risk ◽

Temporal Changes ◽

Gansu Province ◽

Grain For Green ◽

Green Policy ◽

Before And After

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Landscape Change and the Sustainable Development Strategy of Different Types of Ethnic Villages Driven by the Grain for Green Program

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su10103485 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 10 (10) ◽

pp. 3485 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dan Wang ◽

David Higgitt ◽

Yu-Ting Tang ◽

Jun He ◽

Luo Guo

Keyword(s):

Sustainable Development ◽

Development Strategy ◽

Landscape Change ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Landscape Changes ◽

The Sustainable Development ◽

Grain For Green ◽

Grain For Green Program ◽

Different Types ◽

Before And After

The Grain for Green Program (GGP) is an important ecological project in China that was implemented to tackle serious soil erosion and forest loss for sustainable development. Investigating landscape change is an efficient way to monitor and assess the implementation of GGP. In this paper, 180 ethnic villages, including 36 Miao and Dong (MD) villages with combined populations of Miao people and Dong people, 65 Dong villages, and 79 Miao villages in Qiandongnan Prefecture were selected to investigate the influence of GGP on ethnic villages by evaluating the landscape changes before and after the implementation of the GGP within 1-km and 2-km distance buffers around ethnic villages. The results show that the GGP has more significant positive impacts on reforestation around Miao villages than Dong villages and MD villages because Miao villages are mostly located in higher and steeper areas, which are the focus of the GGP. Based on the analysis, a continuation of the GGP in Qiandongnan Prefecture is recommended, as it can incentivize the recovery of forest cover in steeper slopes. More attention should now be paid to the Dong villages and MD villages, which were not previously a focus of the GGP.

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Quantifying the Impact of Grain for Green Program on Ecosystem Service Management: A Case Study of Exibei Region, China

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph16132311 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 16 (13) ◽

pp. 2311 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Qianru Yu ◽

Chen-Chieh Feng ◽

NuanYin Xu ◽

Luo Guo ◽

Dan Wang

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecosystem Services ◽

Ecological Restoration ◽

Ecosystem Service ◽

Service Management ◽

Annual Growth ◽

Annual Growth Rate ◽

Grain For Green ◽

Grain For Green Program ◽

The Impact

Evaluating the impact of an ecological restoration program on ecosystem services is crucial, given the role of such a program in boosting sustainable ecosystem management. This study examines the impact of one of the large-scale ecological restoration programs in China, the Grain for Green Program (GGP), on ecosystem service management in the Exibei region of China. This region is studied, as it is a key source water area with rich biodiversity and has been experiencing GGP for 20 years. To achieve the stated goal the changes of land use and ecosystem services value (ESV) and the ecosystem services scarcity value (ESSV) in the Exibei region were quantified and assessed based on remote sensing images from 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and field survey data. The results indicated that the expansion of construction land and the increase of water body were the dominant land use changes throughout the study period. Farmland, forestland and grassland decreased by 2.61%, 0.47% and 1.41% after the GGP, respectively. The ESV of the entire Exibei region increased slightly in response to land use change during 1990–2015, with an annual loss of 0.08% before the implementation of GGP and an annual growth of 0.03% after the implementation of GGP. Moreover, forestland was the dominant contributor to ESSV after the implementation of the GGP. Its annual growth rate was four times higher than before the commencement of GGP. The results of this study contribute to the protection of the Exibei region ecosystem, and more importantly, the future management of the ecosystem service in the hilly regions of southern China.

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