Buddhist monasteries facilitated landscape conservation on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Context The Sanjiangyuan region of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau—also known as the “Three Rivers’ Headwaters”—is the origin of the Yellow, Yangtze, and Mekong Rivers and therefore the key water source for hundreds of millions of downstream residents. Protecting this region’s ecosystems is a key priority for sustainable development in China and Asia. An important social dimension of Sanjiangyuan is the long-established and widespread presence of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly as manifested in the large number of monasteries throughout the region. However, the influence of cultural factors on environmental change remains largely understudied here. Objective We focus on two types of spatial associations—point-point and point-area features—to quantitatively investigate the effects of Buddhist monasteries on land use/cover change (LUCC) in surrounding landscapes. Methods We conduct a spatially-explicit analysis of Sanjiangyuan for two periods, 1990–2000 and 2010–2015, to identify and quantify the influence of the presence and spatial distributions of Buddhist monasteries on LUCC compared to village communities that lack monasteries. Results We found that the presence of monasteries is highly correlated with the preservation of natural ecosystems, specifically of grasslands and forests. Within monastery buffer zones with radii between 1 and 10 km, 7.13–9.30% more grassland area and 7.14–7.47% more forest area remained around monasteries compared to villages. This contrast decreased with increasing distance to the monastery/village. Overall, built-up areas were also much smaller around monasteries than around villages, while unused land was more commonly transformed to forests and grasslands around monasteries. Conclusions These findings strongly support the idea that Buddhist culture, as manifested through its physical institutions and communities, are instrumental in achieving desired landscape conservation outcomes.

Human–wildlife coexistence on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau: The correlation between Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and avian community composition

“…Our hypothesis was based on the protective effect of monasteries on the surrounding habitat as well as the provision of food resources to local wildlife populations. Previous research has shown that the average area of habitat protected by a monastery is typically within 5 km (Cui et al., 2022), and the food provided by monasteries is limited to wildlife within the immediate surrounding area. Therefore, it is unlikely that a single monastery would have a significant correlation with bird diversity (Kühnert et al., 2019).…”

“…The human footprint index data were obtained from the human footprint data set of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau from 2017, which used six types of spatial data to represent human activities, including population density, land use, grazing density, night lighting, railway and road (Duan & Luo, 2019). Additionally, we chose the ratio of forest habitat, grassland habitats and open space and human footprint index under three different scales (1 km radius, 3 km radius and 5 km radius) from the centre of monasteries/non‐monastery sites/celestial burial grounds, considering that monasteries are known to have an influence on the immediate adjacent land cover up to a distance of 5 km (Cui et al., 2022). We also selected additional landscape factors that could be correlated with bird community composition and abundance, such as the distance to the nearest water and altitude.…”

“…Over the course of centuries, various patterns of coexistence centred on Tibetan Buddhist monasteries have emerged, including feeding of wild animals by monks and believers (Yang et al., 2016), protection of surrounding habitats by monasteries (Cui et al., 2022; Shen & Tan, 2012) and the practice of celestial burial (MaMing et al., 2016). Feeding typically involves wheat, highland barley and highland barley powder on a daily basis as part of the daily offerings by monks and believers.…”

“…To date, only one study has reported the composition of vulture species and populations frequenting celestial burial grounds in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (MaMing et al., 2016). Furthermore, it is worth noting that monasteries in this region have been shown to play a protective role for the surrounding habitats (Cui et al., 2022). As such, these religious sites serve as important locations for the coexistence of human and wildlife, providing crucial protection for local wildlife populations in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (Li et al., 2014).…”

Analysis of the impact of traditional ethnic villages in Hani area on sustainable development

“…The impact of traditional villages on the surrounding land can be measured by establishing a buffer zone [42]. In order to further explore the impact of ethnic villages on various indicators of sustainable development, according to the area and precision of the study area, we set up two buffer zones every 2km with ethnic villages as the center using the MultipleRingBuffer tool and r as the radius (r1 = 2 km, r2 = 4 km) in ArcGIS10.4 software, calculated and compared the values of landscape index, ESV and resistance in the buffer zone from 1995 to 2020 [43][44][45].…”