Non-linear effects of natural and anthropogenic drivers on ecosystem services: Integrating thresholds into conservation planning.

Ecosystem services (ESs) have been widely used for ecological protection and land spatial planning. Natural and anthropogenic drivers exhibit a strong dynamic coupling relationship with ESs. However, current ESs-related research focused on mapping the ESs spatially or investing the trade-offs and synergies relationship between ES, ignoring the nonlinear response of ESs to natural and anthropogenic drivers. Here we aimed to investigate the nonlinear effect of 14 potential drivers (8 natural and 6 anthropogenic) on the total value of six typical ESs (ESV). Taking Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration (BTH) in China as an example, we established 14 constrain lines and identified critical thresholds through the restricted cubic splines (RCS) regression. We found strong non-linear impacts of natural and anthropogenic drivers on ESV and critical thresholds existed among all the 14 constrain lines. The RCS plots showed that the overall ESV was kept at a high level before or after certain thresholds (e.g., altitude >687 m, slope >13.4°, NDVI >0.7, distance from water <31.2 km, etc.). We categorized these threshold combinations and found the potentially high ES delivery areas were mainly distributed in the Yanshan Mountian, accounting for approximately 5% of the total BTH region. These critical thresholds offer a new method to delineate conservation and restoration priority areas.

Investigating the potential impact of ecological restoration strategies on people-landscape interactions through cultural ecosystem services: A case study of Xilin Gol, China.

Although cultural ecosystem services (CES) are greatly valued by diverse stakeholders, the full range of CES provided by a landscape is notoriously difficult to estimate. The resulting lack of objective norms for CES may lead to the loss of the multiple non-material factors that contribute to how a landscape is valued and experienced. This is especially true under ecological restoration, which could sharply change how people experience landscapes. Therefore, our aim in this study was to identify and analyze the CES that arise from people's interaction with their landscape, focusing specifically on the influences of different ecological restoration strategies. We carried out semi-structured interviews with the residents of villages in the Xilin Gol League, Inner Mongolia, China. Regarding the implementation of ecological restoration measures, the people living in typical pastoral zones would be most affected by these measures because their main livelihood (animal husbandry) depends strongly on grasslands. Our results demonstrated that human perception of the CES provided by landscapes is affected not only by the factors related to an individual's cultural worldview (e.g., ethnicity, age, education) but also by the utility of landscape features, which are reflected in the individual's landscape dependence (occupation). Our research provides a cultural perspective for aspects of local well-being in addition to ecological and economic targets. Understanding these other aspects is critical for implementing sustainable ecological restoration.

Using citizen science data to inform the relative sensitivity of waterbirds to natural versus human-dominated landscapes in China.

Habitat loss is widely regarded as one of the most destructive factors threatening native biodiversity. Because migratory waterbirds include some of the most globally endangered species, information on their sensitivity to landscape would benefit their conservation. While citizen science data on waterbird species occurrence are subjected to various biases, their appropriate interpretation can provide information of benefit to species conservation. We apply a bootstrapping procedure to citizen science data to reduce sampling biases and report the relative sensitivity of waterbird species to natural versus human-dominated landscapes. Analyses are performed on 30,491 data records for 69 waterbird species referred to five functional groups observed in China between 2000 and 2018. Of these taxa, 30 species (43.5%) are significantly associated with natural landscapes, more so for cranes, geese, and ducks than for shorebirds and herons. The relationship between land association and the threat status of waterbirds is significant when the range size of species is considered as the mediator, and the higher the land association, the higher the threat status. Sensitive species significantly associated with natural landscapes are eight times more likely to be classified as National Protected Species (NPS) Classes I or II than less sensitive species significantly associated with human-dominated landscapes. We demonstrate the potential for citizen science data to assist in conservation planning in the context of landscape changes. Our methods might assist others to obtain information to help relieve species decline and extinction.

Assessing the influences of ecological restoration on perceptions of cultural ecosystem services by residents of agricultural landscapes of western China.

Landscape change caused by ecological restoration projects has both positive and negative influences on human livelihoods, yet surprisingly little research on the cultural consequences of ecological restoration in agricultural landscapes has taken place. Cultural consequences can be captured in the ecosystem services framework as cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, assessment and valuation of these services to support decision-making for this essential ecosystem is lacking. To help fill this gap, we assessed the opinions of Chinese rural communities about CES and the changes in their perception under the Grain for Green program (GFG), a nationwide program to relieve the pressure on ecosystems (soil erosion and land degradation) by converting cultivated land or barren land on steep slopes into grassland and forests. We used Guyuan City in China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as a case study, using a workshop to identify the CES provided by the agricultural landscape, followed by semi-structured household interviews to quantify perceptions of these CES. We found that all eight CES types identified by the workshop were perceived by the rural communities. Reforestation changed their perceptions of CES directly due to land cover change and indirectly due to the resulting economic changes and migration of mostly young workers in search of better jobs. Cultivated land was perceived as more important than forest for CES provision. In addition, residential areas were perceived as providing significant CES because of local traditions that produce close and highly social neighborhood bonds in agricultural landscapes.