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Greening and ecosystem resilience in the Yangtze River Basin under large-scale afforestation and their climatic drivers

biogeography
ecology
ecosystem-science
natural-resource-management
forestry

Abstract

Greening reflects enhanced canopy productivity, but it is not synonymous with ecosystem resilience. Given the rapid greening driven by large-scale afforestation in the Yangtze River Basin and the uncertainty of its resilience under climate change, we analyzed how greening relates to ecosystem resilience change and identified the climatic drivers from 2000 to 2023. Regional scale results indicated a significant greening trend in vegetation over the past 24 years, while resilience exhibited a non-monotonic trajectory, with an increase during 2000-2011, a decline in 2012-2017, and a recovery after 2018. At the pixel scale, the percentage of pixels with greening-resilience decline was larger than that of other types, with forests and grasslands accounting for 55.57% and 38.75%, respectively, indicating that substantial greening did not translate into a corresponding improvement in resilience. Spatial analysis further revealed a pronounced decoupling between greenness and resilience, particularly in Southeastern Hilly forests and high-altitude grasslands. Climatic driver analysis indicated that forest resilience was mainly driven by mean precipitation and temperature variability, whereas grassland resilience was primarily influenced by mean temperature and mean precipitation. In summary, a single greenness indicator is insufficient to reflect ecosystem stability, and future ecological management should incorporate resilience monitoring into evaluation frameworks.
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