Modeling and predicting land use/cover change (LUCC) and identifying its drivers have been a focus of research over the past few decades. In order to solve the problem of land resource degradation in typical pastoral areas, reveal the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of LUCC, and the contradiction between man and land in sustainable development, we analyze the Gurvanbulag area of Bulgan province, Mongolia, where grassland degradation is relatively serious. The LUCC data in 2000, 2010 and 2019 were obtained through interpreting human-computer interaction. On this basis, the same binary logistic regression (BLR) results were input into the multi-criteria evaluation analytic hierarchy process (MCE_AHP) of CLUE-S and CA_Markov models. The Current Trends (CT) and Ecological Protection (EP) development scenarios were used to predict the temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of LUCC in 2030 and 2040. The results show: (1) both models can effectively simulate the LUCC in 2019, and the CLUE-S model was significantly better than the CA_Markov model. (2) From 2000 to 2019, the LUCC in this region was dominated by a decrease in water and the growth of grassland and other land, indicating that the region is at the risk of land resource degradation. (3) In a multi-scenario development study, by 2030 and 2040, both models predicted that the EP development scenario is more effective in protecting the local ecological environment and it is easier to achieve the sustainability of land resources, than the CT development scenario. Combined with local policy demands and the prediction results of restraining land resource degradation, CLUE-S was significantly higher than the CA_Markov model, indicating that in typical pastoral areas, the former is more in line with the need for sustainable development of the local ecological environment than the latter.

Typical grassland is the core of the Mongolian Plateau grassland belt, and is also an important ecological barrier in the north of China. It is of great significance to explore the real-time changes in grassland climate for the prevention and control of climate disasters, and for ecological protection. In this study, the spatial and temporal variation of temperature, precipitation and maximum wind speed in typical Mongolian Plateau grassland were studied using observation data from 16 meteorological stations from 1978 to 2020, using the linear trend method, cumulative anomaly method, Mann-Kendall test, sliding t-test and Morlet wavelet analysis. The results show that: (1) The typical grassland temperature has been increasing at a rate of 0.4 °C/10a (p < 0.001) over the past 40 years, with the most significant warming in spring and summer; a sudden change from low to high temperature occurred in 1992; the annual average temperature gradually increased from northeast to southwest, with significant warming in the southwest. (2) Annual precipitation decreased slightly at a rate of −2.39 mm/10a, with the most significant decrease in summer precipitation; a sudden change from more to less precipitation occurred in 1998; spatially, precipitation decreased gradually from east to west, with significant moisture reduction in its northern part. (3) The maximum wind speed decreased significantly at a rate of −0.33m/s/10a (p < 0.001), with the most pronounced decrease in spring; the maximum wind speed changed abruptly from strong to weak around 1991; spatially, the annual average maximum wind speed decreased gradually from northwest to southeast and northeast, with the most pronounced decrease in the south and northeast. (4) The wavelet analysis shows that the typical grassland area will still be in a warm, low-rainfall and weak-wind stage in the coming years. Using the above analysis, the typical grassland climate of the Mongolian Plateau has shown a clear trend of warm and dry, weak wind in the past 40 years.

Water use efficiency (WUE) connects two key processes in terrestrial ecosystems: the carbon and water cycles. Thus, it is important to evaluate temporal and spatial changes in WUE over a prolonged period. The spatiotemporal variation characteristics of the WUE in the Mongolian Plateau from 1982 to 2018 were analyzed based on the net primary productivity (NPP), evapotranspiration (ET), temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture. In this study, we used remote sensing data and various statistical methods to evaluate the spatiotemporal patterns of water use efficiency and their potential influencing factors on the Mongolian Plateau from 1982 to 2018. In total, 27.02% of the region witnessed a significant decline in the annual WUE over the 37 years. Two abnormal surges in the WUE_Season (April–October) were detected, from 1997 to 1998 and from 2007 to 2009. The trend in the annual WUE in some broadleaf forest areas in the middle and northeast of the Mongolian Plateau reversed from the original decreasing trend to an increasing trend. WUE has shown strong resilience in previous analytical studies, whereas the WUE in the artificial vegetation area in the middle of the Mongolian Plateau showed weak resilience. WUE had a significant positive correlation with precipitation, soil moisture, and the drought severity index (DSI) but a weak correlation with temperature. WUE had strong resistance to abnormal water disturbances; however, its resistance to the effects of temperature and DSI anomalies was weak. The degree of interpretation of vegetation changes for WUE was higher than that for meteorological factors, and WUE showed weak resistance to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) disturbances. Delaying the start of the vegetation growing season had an increasing effect on WUE, and the interaction between phenological and meteorological vegetation factors had a non-linear enhancing effect on WUE. Human activities have contributed significantly to the increase in WUE in the eastern, central, and southern regions of the Mongolian Plateau. These results provide a reference for the study of the carbon–water cycle in the Mongolian Plateau.