The impacts of land conversion and management measures on the grassland net primary productivity over the Loess Plateau, Northern China

Abstract

In the 1990s, the Chinese government began implementation of a series of national-scale restoration programs to combat environmental degradation. As one of most important arid and semiarid regions of China, the Loess Plateau has attracted attention related to the effectiveness of these initiatives. The present study analyzed land use and cover change (LUCC) of the grassland in the Loess Plateau and the consequent change in net primary productivity (NPP) based on a consecutive land use data derived from the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative land cover maps and the CASA (Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach) model driven by MODIS-NDVI data. The contributions of climate variation and human activities (including land conversion and management measures) to these changes were also quantitatively differentiated. The results indicated that the area of the Loess Plateau grassland experienced a net increase of 0.43 × 10⁴ km² over the study period. The total NPP of the Loess Plateau grassland increased by 11,325.13 Gg C·yr^-1, of which the human activities and climate variation were responsible for 78.45% and 21.55%, respectively. The land conversion reduced the grassland NPP by 308.60 Gg C·yr^-1, whereas management measures increased the NPP by 9197.97 Gg C·yr^-1 in the otherwise unmodified grassland. Overall, ecological restoration programs have effectively increased grassland NPP in the Loess Plateau. However, human activities played both positive and negative impacts in this process.

Keywords: Green-for-Grain Project (GGP); Human activities; Land use and cover change (LUCC); Loess Plateau; Net primary productivity (NPP).