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Embraced for decision-making, resilience has evolved as a meaningful term in areas such as ecology, the economy and society. After a policy of grassland contracts was implemented on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, two grassland management patterns evolved: the multi-household management pattern (MMP) and the singlehousehold management pattern (SMP). Within a resilience-driven perspective, this study compared the outcomes of these grassland management patterns by measuring their effects on the resilience of grazing, ecological, economic and social systems. Resilience indicators for each of the four systems were: grazing system (grazing space, transhumance, water source and reproduction); ecological system (vegetation including cover, biomass, species richness and soil properties including pH, organic carbon, total nitrogen and total phosphorus); economic system (income, expenditure and infrastructure) and the social system (health, assistance, social relations, cultural inheritance and institutional arrangements). In order to provide a social-ecological resilience framework for the two grassland management patterns, a decision support tool was applied to approximately gauge the resilience of each indicator. The results showed that each of the four systems under the MMP had a greater degree of resilience than the SMP, and that the overall resilience of the MMP was estimated at 5.8 units compared to about −5.8 units for the SMP. The relative success of the MMP was seen to rest largely on the maintenance of traditional management practices, social networks, trust and the low cost and high efficiency of informal institutions, which acted to reduce the risk of unsustainable development of ecological and social systems. The important take-home lesson from this study is that contracting of grasslands to private entities on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, and in the rest of the world where similar land management practices exist, must be undertaken with caution.

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In addition to changes in land use and cover, changes in land management pattern can also have a significant effect on soil fertility. However, to date, changes in grassland grazing management pattern caused by policies have received less attention in terms of their impact on soil fertility. In this paper, we investigated the influence of two different grazing management patterns: the multi-household grazing management pattern (consisting of pastures managed by two or more households with no fences separating them) and the single-household grazing pattern (with fences between adjacent pastures managed by different households), which were implemented after the enactment of grassland contract policy, on soil fertility in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Our hypothesis was that soil fertility differed between the two grazing management patterns. We selected five study sites with both grazing management patterns in Maqu County on the eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and sampled 30 winter grasslands from each grazing management pattern to explore differences in soil organic carbon, soil total nitrogen, and soil total phosphorus. We showed that these indicators of fertility status were significantly greater under the multi-household grazing management pattern (47 g C kg −1 , 4.6 g N kg −1 , and 0.77 g P kg −1) compared to the single-household grazing management pattern (43 g C kg −1 , 4.3 g N kg −1 , and 0.73 g P kg −1). This is the first study of the effects of grazing management pattern on soil fertility in this environment, and it indicated that the multi-household grazing management pattern could maintain better soil fertility and help to support sustainable use of these grasslands.

Sustainable land management requires a clear understanding of the changes in soil quality. In exploring whether afforestation has the potential to improve the soil quality in China’s Loess Plateau, soil bulk density ( ρ s ) and pH were compared under five treatments: three forested treatments (16-and 40-year-old apricot stands, and 40-year-old poplar stands), and individual abandoned and cultivated treatments, serving as the controls. Bulk density across the 0–1.0 m soil profile under the 16-year-old apricot treatment (1.12 Mg m−3) and 40-year-old poplar treatment (1.16 Mg m−3) were significantly smaller than their counterparts under the cultivated (1.20 Mg m−3) and abandoned treatments (1.23 Mg m−3). Soil pH of the cultivated treatment (8.46) was significantly lower than that of the abandoned treatment (8.51) or than that of any forested treatment. The ρ s and pH were both affected by stand age, with the ρ s and pH of the 40-year-old apricot treatment being 0.10 Mg m−3 and 0.05 units greater, respectively, than those of the 16-year-old apricot treatment. Treatment and soil depth appeared to interact to influence the ρ s , but this same interaction did not influence the soil pH. This study suggested that afforestation species and stand age should be taken into consideration to harvest maximum benefits from the afforestation efforts.