Early warning indicators of grassland degradation in inner Mongolia
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Agricultural Science, Ecology, Ecosystem Science
- Keywords
- steppe, function group, degraded pastures, warning indicator
- Copyright
- © 2017 Qin et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2017. Early warning indicators of grassland degradation in inner Mongolia. PeerJ Preprints 5:e2915v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2915v1
Abstract
Backgroung: With the implementation of the Household Production Responsibility System in China almost 30 years ago, obvious spatial heterogeneity has developed over rangeland.
Methods: We examined lifeform functional groups over 5 years on household ranches in different grazing utilization rate (30%-95%) ecosystems in Inner Mongolia to identify the early warning indicators of grassland degradation.
Results: The results showed that a similar grassland utilization threshold occurred in different types of steppe, with 78-89% utilization for meadow steppe, 81-89% for typical steppe and 70-85% for desert steppe. The vegetation composition above these utilization thresholds did not show obvious signs of degradation; therefore, the risk of degradation was difficult to determine. The spatial threshold (WD: L) had a value of 31.40:100 for meadow steppe, 8.53:100 for typical steppe and 42.21:100 for desert steppe.
Conclusion: Land managers cannot easily determine the risk of degeneration according to the vegetation composition or function group. So the spatial threshold is important for implemented strategies to prevent degradation, and our study provides new insights to improve the management and restoration of degraded grassland in Inner Mongolia.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Data of vegetation and function group aboveground biomass
There have 4 sheets, the first sheet is data of 4 grazing intensities and 3 steppe from 2005-2009，the 2，3 and 4 sheet are long transect data in 2009