China has responded to a national land-system sustainability emergency via an integrated portfolio of large-scale programmes. Here we review 16 sustainability programmes, which invested US$378.5 billion (in 2015 US$), covered 623.9 million hectares of land and involved over 500 million people, mostly since 1998. We find overwhelmingly that the interventions improved the sustainability of China's rural land systems, but the impacts are nuanced and adverse outcomes have occurred. We identify some key characteristics of programme success, potential risks to their durability, and future research needs. We suggest directions for China and other nations as they progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations' Agenda 2030.

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The relationship between biodiversity and productivity has been a hot topic in ecology. However, the relative importance of taxonomic diversity and functional characteristics (including functional dominance and functional diversity) in maintaining community productivity and the underlying mechanisms (including selection and complementarity effects) of the relationship between diversity and community productivity have been widely controversial. In this study, 194 sites were surveyed in five grassland types along a precipitation gradient in the Inner Mongolia grassland of China. The relationships between taxonomic diversity (species richness and the Shannon–Weaver index), functional dominance (the community‐weighted mean of four plant traits), functional diversity (Rao's quadratic entropy), and community aboveground biomass were analyzed. The results showed that (1) taxonomic diversity, functional dominance, functional diversity, and community aboveground biomass all increased from low to high precipitation grassland types; (2) there were significant positive linear relationships between taxonomic diversity, functional dominance, functional diversity, and community aboveground biomass; (3) the effect of functional characteristics on community aboveground biomass is greater than that of taxonomic diversity; and (4) community aboveground biomass depends on the community‐weighted mean plant height, which explained 57.1% of the variation in the community aboveground biomass. Our results suggested that functional dominance rather than taxonomic diversity and functional diversity mainly determines community productivity and that the selection effect plays a dominant role in maintaining the relationship between biodiversity and community productivity in the Inner Mongolia grassland.

Silicon (Si) has been known to enhance salt resistance in plants. In this experiment, 4-weeks-old alfalfa seedlings were exposed to different NaCl concentrations (0–200 mM) with or without 2 mM Si for two weeks. The results showed that NaCl-stressed alfalfa seedlings showed a decrease in growth performance, such as stem extension rate, predawn leaf water potential (LWP) and the chlorophyll content, potassium (K + ) concentration, as well as the ratio of potassium/sodium ion (K + /Na + ). In contrast, NaCl-stressed alfalfa seedlings increased leaf Na + concentration and the malondialdehyde (MDA) level, as well as the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and peroxidase (POD) in alfalfa leaves. Besides, exogenous Si application enhanced photosynthetic parameters of NaCl-stressed alfalfa seedlings, which was accompanied by the improvement in predawn LWP, level of chlorophyll content, and water use efficiency (WUE). The Si-treated plants enhanced salinity tolerance by limiting Na + accumulation while maintaining K + concentration in leaves. It also established K + /Na + homeostasis by increasing K + /Na + radio to protect the leaves from Na + toxicity and thereby maintained higher chlorophyll retention. Simultaneously, Si-treated plants showed higher antioxidant activities and decreased MDA content under NaCl stress. Our study concluded that Si application enhanced salt tolerance of alfalfa through improving the leaves photosynthesis, enhancing antioxidant performance and maintaining K + /Na + homeostasis in leaves. Our data further indicated exogenous Si application could be effectively manipulated for improving salt resistance of alfalfa grown in saline soil.

BackgroundThe redundancy hypothesis predicts that the species redundancy in a plant community enhances community stability. However, numerous studies in recent years questioned the positive correlation between redundancy and stability.MethodologyWe explored the relationship between the species redundancy, functional redundancy and community stability in typical steppe grassland in Northern China by sampling grassland vegetation along a gradient of resource availability caused by micro-topography. We aimed to test whether community redundancy enhanced community stability, and to quantify the relative importance of species redundancy and functional redundancy in maintaining community stability.ResultsOur results showed that the spatial stability of plant community production increases with increased supply of soil resources, and the functional redundancy instead of species diversity or species redundancy is correlated with the community stability. Our results supported the redundancy hypothesis and have implications for sustainable grassland management.