Bidirectional coupling between land‐use change and desertification in arid areas: A study contrasting intracoupling and telecoupling

Abstract

In arid areas, land-use change interacts with desertification through water resources.Since water is flowing, the interaction between land-use change and desertification is not only local, but also regional. Previous studies have focused on the unidirectional influence of land-use change on desertification, but little research has quantitatively examined the bidirectional coupling, especially contrasting the difference between intracoupling (interactions within a sub-catchment) and telecoupling (interactions across different sub-catchments) within a hydraulically linked watershed. To solve this issue, we introduced a vector autoregressive model and designed a strategy from intracoupling to telecoupling to examine the interactions between them in the Tarim River. In intracoupling, a negative relationship was found in most areas. The increase of the land-use degree inhibits the desertification expansion, and this inhibition degree in the short term increases with the desertification degree. Conversely, the effect of desertification on land use is relatively smaller, and the feedback direction is related to land-use degree. The region with a relatively low farmland exploitation intensity shows negative feedback and vice versa. In telecoupling, a positive relationship was found: Increasing land-use degree in upstream sub-catchment aggravates the desertification expansion in midstream and downstream sub-catchments. Regarding the opposing unidirectional effect, after desertification expansion in midstream and downstream sub-catchments, humans will slow down land exploitation in the upstream sub-catchment, but this behaviour has a certain time lag. This study demonstrates that the special relationship found in telecoupling should be considered in the model development of desertification and land-use simulation.

Arable land in Northwest China: Dynamics analysis of health and productivity in 2000–2020

“…The research uses the following formula to calculate the coupling relationship between ALH and ALP (Li, Xu, & Zhang, 2023). Formula is used to normalize and remove the influence of heavy tail distribution and Formula is used to calculate the coupling relation index, which can effectively solve the problem of overestimation of forward relation after modification. where is the normalized index, ranging from 0 to 1.…”

Multiscale and multifunctional analysis of the coupling relationship between land use and desertification

“…Based on high-resolution remote sensing images and ground samples (Figure 1), the monitoring of desertification in this study had an overall accuracy of 85.42%. Detailed calculations for the DDI and DI of the Tarim Basin were reported by Li, Xu, and Zhang (2022).…”

“…There is much evidence that drylands are now expanding and their ecosystem is also degrading, which restricts the improvement of ecosystem services and human well‐being (Huang et al, 2016; Martinez‐Valderrama et al, 2020; Phillips et al, 2022). Land use change, the most direct manifestation of human activity, is considered to be the primary driver of desertification (Burrell et al, 2020; Song et al, 2018); in turn, desertification has significantly changed land use activities, both directly and indirectly (Li, Xu, & Zhang, 2022; Wang, 2014). The key to achieving a world with neutral land degradation is understanding the complex interactions between land use and desertification in the fragile environment of arid regions, which face the dual demands of economic development and ecological protection.…”

“…As a result of the spatial mobility of water resources, human–environment interactions will generate spillover effects at the scale of small watersheds. Specifically, the expansion of oases in the upstream region has suppressed the local desertification expansion (intracoupling) but has led to ecological deterioration in the downstream region (telecoupling) (Li, Xu, & Zhang, 2022). This may cause the coupling result to be offset on the scale of large watersheds.…”