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Grassland health assessment is the basis for formulating grassland protection policy. However, there are few assessment methods that consider the angle of natural succession for northern China’s regional native grassland with excessive human activities. The main purpose of this study is to build an assessment system for these areas from the perspective of natural succession. Besides, the minimal cumulative resistance (MCR) model was used to extract potential ecological information from the study area as a supplementary reference for the assessment results. The result for Bayinxile pasture, a typical semiarid steppe with excessive human activities located in northern China, showed that: (1) The ecological function of eastern hilly area was better than that of other regions and the western area was lowest as a whole. (2) The river was the most important ecological network in the whole grassland in that it was of vital significance in the prevention of retrogressive succession and in the linking of ecological communities. (3) The density of ecological network was closely related to the intensity of human activities, and farmland and roads had great negative influence on the connection of the grassland ecological network. We further proposed an ecological control zone and made suggestions for Bayinxile ecological management to prevent grassland degradation based on the above results. This study should provide a new perspective for grassland health assessment and sustainable development of regional grassland.
Nitu Wu; Aijun Liu; Yongfang Wang; Lanhua Li; Lumengqiqige Chao; Guixiang Liu. An Assessment Framework for Grassland Ecosystem Health with Consideration of Natural Succession: A Case Study in Bayinxile, China. Sustainability 2019, 11, 1096 .
AMA StyleNitu Wu, Aijun Liu, Yongfang Wang, Lanhua Li, Lumengqiqige Chao, Guixiang Liu. An Assessment Framework for Grassland Ecosystem Health with Consideration of Natural Succession: A Case Study in Bayinxile, China. Sustainability. 2019; 11 (4):1096.
Chicago/Turabian StyleNitu Wu; Aijun Liu; Yongfang Wang; Lanhua Li; Lumengqiqige Chao; Guixiang Liu. 2019. "An Assessment Framework for Grassland Ecosystem Health with Consideration of Natural Succession: A Case Study in Bayinxile, China." Sustainability 11, no. 4: 1096.
With intensification of climate change and human activities, warming and drying trend has brought severe challenges to pastoral areas in arid and semi-arid regions. Consequently, it becomes imperative to explore non-stationarity features of drought in such regions. In this research, the SPEIbase v2.4 datasets with a 0.5 degree spatial resolution was employed to extract Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) in Inner Mongolia, China. We explored non-stationarity characteristics of drought using Breaks For Additive Seasonal and Trend (BFAST) method, investigated the variation characteristics of drought intensity in each time interval using intensity analysis method, and finally assessed the spatial and temporal gathering characteristics of drought with Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF). The results showed that trend of regional drought had a tendency towards drought conditions, which is particularly significant from the year 1945 onwards in the overall Inner Mongolia. We have explored a long behavior of drought in semiarid and central regions of cold semihumid climate zone throughout the whole study period, and detected a drying trend in northeastern regions of Inner Mongolia at the latter decades. The overall drought intensity displayed an increasing trend first, which was followed by a decreasing trend, among which the extreme drought was dominant in period of 1960–1970. EOF mode1 showed that variation intensity of drought did not show a significantly increasing trend in the entire region, and the drought with high amplitude was likely to occur in the central region. EOF mode2 showed that variation intensity of drought displayed the opposite phases between the eastern and the western regions. The northeastern regions were prone to display a high amplitude of drought.
Yongfang Wang; Guixiang Liu; Enliang Guo. Spatial distribution and temporal variation of drought in Inner Mongolia during 1901–2014 using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. Science of The Total Environment 2018, 654, 850 -862.
AMA StyleYongfang Wang, Guixiang Liu, Enliang Guo. Spatial distribution and temporal variation of drought in Inner Mongolia during 1901–2014 using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index. Science of The Total Environment. 2018; 654 ():850-862.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYongfang Wang; Guixiang Liu; Enliang Guo. 2018. "Spatial distribution and temporal variation of drought in Inner Mongolia during 1901–2014 using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index." Science of The Total Environment 654, no. : 850-862.
Agricultural flood disaster risk assessment plays a vital role in agricultural flood disaster risk management. Extreme precipitation events are the main causes of flood disasters in the Midwest Jilin province (MJP). Therefore, it is important to analyse the characteristics of extreme precipitation events and assess the flood risk. In this study, the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA) method was used to determine the threshold of extreme precipitation events. The total duration of extreme precipitation and the total extreme precipitation were selected as flood indicators. The copula functions were then used to determine the joint distribution to calculate the bivariate joint return period, which is the flood hazard. Historical data and flood indicators were used to build an agricultural flood disaster vulnerability surface model. Finally, the risk curve for agricultural flood disasters was established to assess the flood risk in the MJP. The results show that the proposed approaches precisely describe the joint distribution of the flood indicators. The results of the vulnerability surface model are in accordance with the spatiotemporal distribution pattern of the agricultural flood disaster loss in this area. The agricultural flood risk of the MJP gradually decreases from east to west. The results provide a firm scientific basis for flood control and drainage plans in the area.
Yongfang Wang; Guixiang Liu; Enliang Guo; Xiangjun Yun. Quantitative Agricultural Flood Risk Assessment Using Vulnerability Surface and Copula Functions. Water 2018, 10, 1229 .
AMA StyleYongfang Wang, Guixiang Liu, Enliang Guo, Xiangjun Yun. Quantitative Agricultural Flood Risk Assessment Using Vulnerability Surface and Copula Functions. Water. 2018; 10 (9):1229.
Chicago/Turabian StyleYongfang Wang; Guixiang Liu; Enliang Guo; Xiangjun Yun. 2018. "Quantitative Agricultural Flood Risk Assessment Using Vulnerability Surface and Copula Functions." Water 10, no. 9: 1229.