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Effects of land use changes for ecological restoration on soil moisture on the Chinese Loess Plateau: a meta-analytical approach

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Abstract

Soil moisture is an important resource for plant growth on the arid and semi-arid Loess Plateau of China where the “Grain for Green” project was launched in 1999, but there has been no systematic evaluation of soil moisture from the effects of ecological restoration at a regional scale. We systematically assessed 63 published studies during 2000–2015, including 2050 observations at 68 sites on the Loess Plateau with the aim of determining soil moisture changes and the factors influencing those changes. We found that, after land use conversion, soil moisture decreased by 17% in the upper 100 cm soil layer and that tree plantations and shrub lands appeared to cause soil moisture depletion which became increasingly serious with soil depth. The decrease of soil moisture was significantly influenced by the planting species in all restoration types (tree plantations, shrub lands, and grasslands). We also found that tree plantations and grasslands converted from farmlands consumed more soil moisture than from wasteland (including bare land, abandoned land and wild grasslands). Artificial restoration led to significant soil moisture reduction, but natural restoration had little effect on soil moisture. Therefore, natural restoration should be an alternative restoration practice on the Loess Plateau. These results will provide helpful information for artificial afforestation and planning ecological restoration campaigns for policy makers on water-limited regions.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the authors for their original data for developing this study. This study was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos. 08R8A010YA and 088RA20CYA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

    Bowei Yu, Gaohuan Liu & Qingsheng Liu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Bowei Yu

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  1. Bowei Yu
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  2. Gaohuan Liu
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  3. Qingsheng Liu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qingsheng Liu.

Additional information

Project funding: This study was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos. 08R8A010YA and 088RA20CYA).

The online version is available at http://www.springerlink.com

Corresponding editor: Zhu Hong.

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Yu, B., Liu, G. & Liu, Q. Effects of land use changes for ecological restoration on soil moisture on the Chinese Loess Plateau: a meta-analytical approach. J. For. Res. 31, 443–452 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0760-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-018-0760-0

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