Human induced dryland degradation in Ordos Plateau, China, revealed by multilevel statistical modeling of normalized difference vegetation index and rainfall time-series

Abstract

Land degradation causes serious environmental problems in many regions of the world, and although it can be effectively assessed and monitored using a time series of rainfall and a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from remotely-sensed imagery, dividing human-induced land degradation from vegetation dynamics due to climate change is not a trivial task. This paper presented a multilevel statistical modeling of the NDVI-rainfall relationship to detect human-induced land degradation at local and landscape scales in the Ordos Plateau of Inner Mongolia, China, and recognized that anthropogenic activities result in either positive (land restoration and re-vegetation) or negative (degradation) trends. Linear regressions were used to assess the accuracy of the multilevel statistical model. The results show that: (1) land restoration was the dominant process in the Ordos Plateau between 1998 and 2012; (2) the effect of the statistical removal of precipitation revealed areas of human-induced land degradation and improvement, the latter reflecting successful restoration projects and changes in land management in many parts of the Ordos; (3) compared to a simple linear regression, multilevel statistical modeling could be used to analyze the relationship between the NDVI and rainfall and improve the accuracy of detecting the effect of human activities. Additional factors should be included when analyzing the NDVI-rainfall relationship and detecting human-induced loss of vegetation cover in drylands to improve the accuracy of the approach and eliminate some observed non-significant residual trends.

Rehabilitation of degraded dryland ecosystems – review

“…Drescher 1995;Yang et al 2006;Sternberg 2008;Le Polain de Waroux and Lambin 2012;Zhang et al 2014); however, dryland rehabilitation experiences or research at landscape level are much less common (e.g. Dorrough and Moxham 2005;Ravi et al 2009) and often refer to protected landscapes (e.g.…”

Human-induced grassland degradation/restoration in the central Tibetan Plateau: The effects of ecological protection and restoration projects

“…To prevent and reverse this degradation, a series of ecological protection and restoration projects have been implemented in many countries (Cao, 2011;Doren et al, 2009;Petursdottir et al, 2013), notably in China. Evidences have shown that these projects have helped to restore vegetation cover (Zhang et al, 2014a), and increase the net primary production and grassland yield (Fan et al, 2010). However, their positive effects appear to vary over space and time (Qi et al, 2013;Zhou et al, 2009).…”

“…The identified variation is primarily related to human interferences, such as urbanization, land use policies and ecological projects (Li et al, 2012). As a novel method, the RESTREND has been proved to be a reliable indicator of human-induced vegetation variation (Wessels et al, 2007), and mainly been applied to identify land degradation in precipitation controlled regions (Wessels et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2014a). However, its application in the temperature and precipitation jointly controlled environments was not assessed.…”

Assessment and monitoring of land degradation using geospatial technology in Bathinda district, Punjab, India

“…Land use activities have a considerable influence on the people, posing serious consequences for social, economic and ecological aspects of human society (Burchinal, 1989;FAO, 1997). The alteration in ecological and economic functions due to the decrease in the productivity and quality of the land (Hill et al, 2005) can lead to decline in the biological productivity of land due to climate change and human activities (Zhang et al, 2014). Land degradation poses a great threat to food security and damages the environmental safety of land as well as influences the sustainable development of society and economy .…”