Abstract
Climate change and human activities have significantly influenced soil loss and the soil conservation service, posed threats to regional ecological sustainability. However, the relationships and underlying driving forces between potential soil loss, actual soil loss, and soil conservation service have not been well understood. Utilizing the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model, we evaluated the soil conservation service on the Tibetan plateau from 1990 to 2020. We analyzed the spatial and temporal trends and examined the driving factors using linear regression, Pearson correlation, and random forest regression. The soil conservation service exhibited a complex pattern of increase followed by a decrease, with a turning point around 2010. Soil conservation service and soil loss demonstrated non-trade-off changes. The potential soil loss dominated the spatiotemporal patterns of soil conservation service on the Tibetan Plateau. Climatic factors significantly influenced the spatiotemporal patterns of soil conservation service, with annual precipitation emerging as the dominant driving factor, contributing approximately 20%. However, the impacts of human activities became more pronounced since 2010, and the contribution of vegetation to changes in soil conservation service was increased. The impact of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) on soil conservation service for the grades I, II, and III increased by 13.19%, 3.08%, and 3.41%, respectively. Conversely, in northern Tibet before 2010 and eastern Three-River-Source after 2010, soil conservation service exhibited an increasing trend driven by both climate factors and human activities. Which indicates that the implementation of ecological restoration measures facilitated vegetation improvement and subsequently reduced actual soil loss. This study provides a scientific basis for resource management, land development strategies, and the formulation of ecological restoration measures on the Tibetan Plateau.
Highlights
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Climatic factors dominated the spatiotemporal patterns of soil conservation service in the majority of the Tibetan Plateau.
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The contribution of vegetation changes to soil conservation service changes has increased since 2010.
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Initial success has been observed in the implementation of ecological protection measures in northern Tibet and the eastern Three-River-Source region.
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Data availability
The data used in this study are sourced from various major public databases, and the origin of the data is duly indicated in paper. Data will be made available on request.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42101292), Special Foundation for Basic Research Program of Yunnan province (Grant No. 202001AU070019), and the Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Dali University (Grant No. KYBS2021071).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Yanjie Zhang, Yuejun Liu, Jianghao Cheng, Ying Pan and Junxi Wu. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yuejun Liu and Yanjie Zhang. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Liu, Y., Cheng, J., Zhang, Y. et al. Non-trade-off Changes in Soil Conservation Service and Soil Loss on the Tibetan Plateau Underlying the Impacts of Climate Change and human activities. Environmental Management (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-01987-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-01987-1