China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management

Abstract

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct (human land-use management) and indirect factors (climate change, CO 2 fertilization, nitrogen deposition, recovery from natural disturbances, etc.). Among these, climate change and CO 2 fertilization effect seem to be the dominant drivers. However, recent satellite data (2000–2017) reveal a greening pattern that is strikingly prominent in China and India, and overlapping with croplands world-wide. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). China is engineering ambitious programs to conserve and expand forests with the goal of mitigating land degradation, air pollution and climate change. Food production in China and India has increased by over 35% since 2000 mostly due to increasing harvested area through multiple cropping facilitated by fertilizer use and surface/ground-water irrigation. Our results indicate that the direct factor is a key driver of the “Greening Earth”, accounting for over a third, and likely more, of the observed net increase in green leaf area. They highlight the need for realistic representation of human land-use practices in Earth system models.

The Trend Reversal of Dust Aerosol Over East Asia and the North Pacific Ocean Attributed to Large‐Scale Meteorology, Deposition, and Soil Moisture

“…Moreover, it is also noted that during the process of dust transport, dry‐and‐wet depositions are nonnegligible factors influencing the dust loading in the downstream regions (Dai et al, ; Guo et al, ; Yim et al, ). Interestingly, soil moisture in China has shown to be experiencing significant increasing trend in recent decade (Guo et al, ), which could be due to the fast greening speed through land use management in this region (C. Chen, Park, et al, ). Therefore, the changes in soil moisture should also be taken into account when analyzing the long‐term trend of dust over East Asia and the North Pacific Ocean (EA&NPO).…”

Tracking spatial–temporal landscape changes of impervious surface areas, bare lands, and inundation areas in China during 2001–2017

“…There has been a long controversy over the relative importance of climatic factors and anthropogenic causes on land degradation (Feng et al, ; Miao et al, ). Our study highlighted the key role of anthropogenic causes from the following two different aspects: land degradation mainly experienced in humid/semihumid regions due to intensive land development and human disturbance; significant reduction of newly formed bare lands in this decade compared with that in the past decade in arid/semiarid regions owing to the huge sustainability project from the Chinese government (Chen et al, ; Qiu & Zhang, ).…”

Research trends on bats in China: A twenty-first century review

“…(iii) Increasing landscape connectivity to facilitate bats dispersion among forest fragments is a key factor to prevent massive biodiversity losses in the next decades (Hughes et al, 2012). In this century, multiple afforestation programs have increased 42% of the forest cover in China, the country with the highest greening rate in the world (Chen et al, 2019).…”