Effects of protection and restoration on reducing ecological vulnerability

Assessment of Ecological Vulnerability on Northern Sand Prevention Belt of China Based on the Ecological Pressure–Sensibility–Resilience Model

“…Since the middle of the 20th century, the global ecological environment has been altered dramatically accompanying the increase of human activities and global climate change [1]. Ecosystem degradation such as deforestation, soil degradation, desertification, and loss of biodiversity has become one of the most prominent environmental problems around the world, especially in ecologically vulnerable regions [2,3], which would threaten ecosystem services and human well-being [4]. Ecological vulnerability is a specific attribute of ecosystems, which indicates the resistance and resilience of an ecosystem to external interference within a certain region [4][5][6][7][8][9].…”

“…Ecological vulnerability is a specific attribute of ecosystems, which indicates the resistance and resilience of an ecosystem to external interference within a certain region [4][5][6][7][8][9]. It is an important evaluation indicator reflecting regional ecological status and the degree of ecosystem stability, which also is the key content in global change and sustainable development [3,10]. Therefore, a quantitative assessment of the vulnerability of ecosystems is the scientific basis of adapting and mitigating climate changes and is of great significance for ecological protection and restoration and ecological environment management [1,3,11,12].…”

“…To assess the ecological vulnerability of ecosystem, a series of quantitative assessment models have been developed based on the different principles and purposes of assessment, mainly including the pressure-sensibility-resilience model [3,4,13], exposuresensitivity adaptation model [14,15], resilience-exposure-sensitivity model [16], pressurestate-response model [4,17], society-ecology model [18], influencing performance-stress factors model [19], natural causes-results model [20], etc. In these quantitative assessment models, the weights of the evaluation indices are generally determined using principal component analysis [8,21,22], fuzzy methods [23], analytic hierarchy processes [24,25], artificial neural network methods [26], etc.…”

“…Ecological restoration is widely implemented as a means of restoring ecosystem functions, reducing ecological vulnerability, and promoting harmony between humans and land [38]. Therefore, large-scale ecological restoration projects in the NSPB such as the Three-North Afforestation Program (TNAP), Sand Prevention and Control Projects, and Grain for Green Program (GGP) have been implemented to improve the local ecological environment [3,39]. Although several studies have shown that the ecological environment in the northern sand prevention belt has been improved accompanying by the implementation of ecological restoration projects [1,37,40], the ecological vulnerability of NSPB is still fully unknown, which is a disadvantage of ecological protection and restoration in this region.…”

“…This was because the pressure-sensibility-resilience model has the advantages of the comprehensive evaluation of ecological vulnerability, data availability, and strong regional pertinence, which has been successfully widely utilized in studies on ecologically fragile areas over the years [41]. In addition, this model is constructed based on the connotation of ecosystem stability and has a clear causal relationship, which covers three major components of ecological vulnerability, namely, ecological sensitivity, ecological resilience, and ecological pressure [3]. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) can provide information about the most meaningful parameters, which are those that describe the whole data set and allow for data reduction with minimal loss of the original information [42].…”