Alignment of social and ecological structures increased the ability of river management

Wang, Shuai; Fu, Bojie; Bodin, Örjan; Liu, Jianguo; Zhang, Mengmeng; Li, Xiaoyan

doi:10.1016/j.scib.2019.07.016

Cited by 34 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…However, oases have subsequently experienced decreases in soil moisture and even desertification in some areas. And many studies have confirmed that the groundwater levels are declining in the oasis region (Xie et al 2014, Zhou et al 2017, Wang et al 2019. Therefore, the ecosystem function and stability of the newly created oases still need to be systematically assessed.…”

Section: Implications For Oasis Expansion and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal patterns of oasis dynamics in China’s drylands between 1987 and 2017

Chen

Wang

Liu

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Oases are among the most productive and vulnerable ecosystems on drylands as well as central areas of human life and economic development. In China, oasis expansion and degradation are directly related to the survival and development of tens of millions of inhabitants who live within them, profoundly affecting human well-being. However, our understanding of the spatiotemporal dynamics of China’s oases has been limited. This creates a challenge to accurately assess the environmental impacts of oasis dynamics and sustainable oasis development. Here we analyzed Landsat images (5 TM, 7 ETM+, and 8 OIL, ∼61 900 images) over the period 1987–2017, and we produced annual maps of China’s oases (30 m spatial resolution) using trajectories and spectral-temporal segmentation algorithm (LandTrendr) and machine-learning methods (Random Forest). We found that oasis areas increased significantly between 1987 and 2017 (+8.82 Mha). Grasslands and croplands expanded the most, and reclamation of deserts and grasslands made cropland the largest gainer. At the provincial scale, oasis expansion in Inner Mongolia and Qinghai was mainly attributed to grassland restoration. In Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia, reclamation of croplands was also an important factor in addition to grassland restoration. With the expansion of the oasis ∼73.36% of areas showed decreasing trends of soil moisture, and even desertification in some areas. The overexpansion of oases might cause a great challenge to regional water security. Our dataset and results can provide a basis for identifying trade-off areas/regions between development benefits and environmental impacts, helping policymakers to identify high-priority areas for intervention and reasonably plan land-use spatial structure in oasis areas for sustainable development of oases.

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Section: Implications For Oasis Expansion and Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatio-temporal patterns of oasis dynamics in China’s drylands between 1987 and 2017

Chen

Wang

Liu

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Although the emergence of bridging organization improved the SE match and increased the effectiveness of basin governance, there are still governance challenges to face, including the SE mismatch [41]. From our results, the ecological network in the HRB has a low network density and high vertex strength, and the ecological nodes with high strength (middle reaches and downstream reaches) are well-connected but belong to different communities.…”

Section: Cross-boundary Management Restricted To Only the River Has Ementioning

confidence: 80%

Structure Disentanglement and Effect Analysis of the Arid Riverscape Social-Ecological System Using a Network Approach

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2019

Sustainability

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Riverscapes are coupled social-ecological systems (SESs), in which the differences between the scales and functioning of interacting social and ecological components ( “mismatch”) impose challenges for global arid basin sustainability. Here, we defined riverscape SESs as networks of connected ecological and social components (nodes) to disentangle the structure and effects of SESs in Heihe River Basin (HRB) in arid regions of northwest China. Results showed the ecological network in HRB has low network density and high vertex strength. Heihe River Basin Bureau, as an emerging bridging organization, changed the SES structure and increased the matching degree of SES from 0.33 to 0.53, which has caused an obvious improvement in the downstream ecology. However, the characteristics of the ecological network demonstrated that cross-boundary management actions restricted to only the river would exacerbate local environmental pressures, such as the continued decline of groundwater in midstream regions and the potential appropriation of water for ecology by the expanding farmland in the downstream region. Our study demonstrated that network analysis could be one promising direction to untangle the complex SES and understand the relationship between SES structure and outcomes. We suggest comanaging the cross-boundary river and lands to further match the SES for basin sustainability.

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“…Analyses of driving factors can provide reliable theoretical support for studying the driving force of WUE. At the same time, it is helpful to apply the whole‐basin method, coordinate the social and ecological structures, restore and manage the degraded river ecosystem (Wang et al, 2019), and realize the sustainable management of river basin water resources.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of climatic and social factors to two water use efficiency indicators in the Yellow River

Fan

Wen

Cai

et al. 2022

Hydrological Processes

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Tracing the spatiotemporal tendency and driving forces of water use efficiency (WUE) is of great significance for understanding the carbon‐water balance, especially in large river basins. The lack of differential comparisons regarding the tendencies and driving forces of WUE indicators between the upper and lower reaches of rivers often affects the collaborative allocation and utilization of water resources at the basin scale, especially social factors such as population and economy distributions. Using remote sensing data and hierarchical decomposition methods, we identified the spatiotemporal distribution of the WUE of ecosystems (WUEe) and the WUE of canopies (WUEc) in the Yellow River Basin from 2003 to 2017 as well as the contribution rates of climatic and social factors to WUEe and WUEc. Our results show that WUEe had a different distribution pattern than WUEc. An increase in WUEe was accompanied by a decrease in WUEc, and these changes varied among the upper, middle and lower reaches. WUEc was most negatively correlated with pressure (| r | = 0.65), while WUEe was most positively correlated with the precipitation rate (| r | = 0.68). The contribution rates of climatic factors to both WUEc and WUEe in the upper reaches were higher than 95%. The middle reaches were mainly driven by climatic factors, with contribution rates higher than 90%. In the lower reaches, the contribution rates of social factors to WUEe were higher than 30%. These differentiated contributions indicated the importance of considering social factors in the lower reaches than in the upper reaches when managing WUEe under the dominance of climatic factors on WUEc.

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Alignment of social and ecological structures increased the ability of river management

Cited by 34 publications

References 40 publications

Spatio-temporal patterns of oasis dynamics in China’s drylands between 1987 and 2017

Spatio-temporal patterns of oasis dynamics in China’s drylands between 1987 and 2017

Structure Disentanglement and Effect Analysis of the Arid Riverscape Social-Ecological System Using a Network Approach

Contributions of climatic and social factors to two water use efficiency indicators in the Yellow River

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