Identifying vegetation restoration effectiveness and driving factors on different micro-topographic types of hilly Loess Plateau: From the perspective of ecological resilience

Abstract

Vegetation restoration is an important way to improve the sustainability of the ecosystem in the hilly Loess Plateau. The variation of vegetation coverage, caused by the combined effects of meteorological factors and human activities, reflects the succession trend of regional ecosystems. Given the complexity and the diversity of landform in the hilly Loess Plateau, vegetation restoration is more affected by topographic factors. Nevertheless, few studies have considered the characteristics and trends of vegetation restoration under different micro-topographic types in the long-time series. From the perspective of ecological resilience based on the fractional vegetation cover (FVC), the trend, the hurst exponent, and the geographical spatial research were used to analyze the variation and future sustainability of vegetation restoration on different micro-topographic types for 20 years. Besides, the spatial autocorrelation, principal component analysis (PCA) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) were applied to identify the driving factors of vegetation restoration. The results showed: (1) the average of the overall regional vegetation coverage was 61.32%, and only 0.95% of the regional vegetation was degraded in the past 20 years. However, in the future, 69.87% of the area would be degraded from improvement, and 0.52% would be significantly decreased; (2) the vegetation coverage in descending order was as follows: ridge area with shady and steep slope, gully area with shady and steep slope, ridge area with sunny and steep slope, gully area with sunny and steep slope, gully area with shady and gentle slope, ridge area with shady and gentle slope, ridge area with sunny and gentle slope, gully area with sunny and gentle slope, valley area; (3) the difference of vegetation degradation among micro-topography was remarkable, and the valley area and gully area with sunny and steep slope have the greatest decrease; (4) the primary factors affecting vegetation restoration in the hilly Loess Plateau were temperature, moisture, soil quality, and social economical condition, and the dominant factors were various under different micro-topographic types and villages. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust ecological engineering measures by comprehensively considering the regional differences among dominant factors of vegetation restoration.

Keywords: Driving force analysis; Ecological policy; Hurst exponent; Spatial autocorrelation; Vegetation restoration.