Substantial gaps between the protection of biodiversity hotspots in alpine grasslands and the effectiveness of protected areas on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China

Su, Xukun; Han, Wangya; Li, Guohua; Zhang, Yong; Lu, Huiting

doi:10.1016/j.agee.2019.03.013

Cited by 36 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Road and railway construction affected the vigilance behavior and initial flight ability of wild birds, and decreased aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP).[2,85,95-98]2. Climate changeIncreased unstable plant biomass; decreased plant cover and aboveground and belowground biomass; stimulated desert exacerbation; declined river water quantity, storage, and flows; decreased grassland quality and species richness, limiting precipitation and temperature; reduced permafrost and glacier receding; altered soil carbon and nitrogen cycling; and transformed alpine meadow into shrubs [25,34,41,55,60,72,73,85,[99][100][101]. 3.…”

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confidence: 99%

Status and Challenges of Qinghai–Tibet Plateau’s Grasslands: An Analysis of Causes, Mitigation Measures, and Way Forward

et al. 2020

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Grassland ecosystems on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) provide numerous ecosystem services and functions to both local communities and the populations living downstream through the provision of water, habitat, food, herbal medicines, and shelter. This review examined the current ecological status, degradation causes, and impacts of the various grassland degradation mitigation measures employed and their effects on grassland health and growth in the QTP. Our findings revealed that QTP grasslands are continually being degraded as a result of complex biotic and abiotic drivers and processes. The biotic and abiotic actions have resulted in soil erosion, plant biomass loss, soil organic carbon loss, a reduction in grazing and carrying capacity, the emergence of pioneer plant species, loss of soil nutrients, and an increase in soil pH. A combination of factors such as overgrazing, land-use changes, invasive species encroachment, mining activities, rodent burrowing activities, road and dam constructions, tourism, migration, urbanization, and climate change have caused the degradation of grasslands on the QTP. A conceptual framework on the way forward in tackling grassland degradation on the QTP is presented together with other appropriate measures needed to amicably combat grassland degradation on the QTP. It is recommended that a comprehensive and detailed survey be carried out across the QTP to determine the percentage of degraded grasslands and hence, support a sound policy intervention.

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Status and Challenges of Qinghai–Tibet Plateau’s Grasslands: An Analysis of Causes, Mitigation Measures, and Way Forward

et al. 2020

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“…First, in this study, we investigated the responses of habitat quality and animal biodiversity to grazing activities at 5 km grid scale. Studies have shown that there was a scale effect of human activities on habitat quality and animal biodiversity (Li et al, 2019a;Su et al, 2019). For the QTP, which was a large area with a more complex environment, the effects of grazing activities on habitat quality and animal biodiversity may vary greatly at different raster scales .…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responses of Habitat Quality and Animal Biodiversity to Grazing Activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Liu

Wang

et al. 2021

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Grazing activities perhaps lead to habitat quality degradation and animal biodiversity loss while the effects on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is still relatively poorly studied. Based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model, geographical detector model and generalized linear mixed model, the responses of habitat quality and animal biodiversity to grazing activities at 5 km grid scale were analyzed. Results showed that the overall habitat quality on the QTP was high with 76.43% of the total area, and poor level accounted for 19.56%. High level habitat was mainly distributed in the southern part, while the poor level in the northern part. The mean grazing activity explanatory ability to habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness were 0.346, 0.430, and 0.354. The interaction effects between slope and grazing activities on habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness were the most important interaction effects, and the area affected by the interaction was 73.82, 46.00, and 46.17% of habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness, respectively. The interaction effects on habitat quality, bird species richness and mammal richness all showed “low in the northwest and high in the southeast”. Grazing activities and habitat quality had a positive correlation while bird species richness, and mammal richness negative correlations. The spatial relationship of grazing activities of habitat quality was “higher in the middle and lower around the periphery”, while the spatial distribution of grazing activities of bird species richness and mammal richness was “higher in the east and lower in the west”. This study explicitly revealed the responses of habitat quality and animal biodiversity to grazing activities, thus providing references for biodiversity conservation on the QTP.

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“…Identifying the gaps in PAs in China occurs mainly at the large administrative and mountainous scales (Su et al 2019. However, karst aquifer systems are connected over large areas and constitute transboundary groundwater resources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial conservation prioritization considering socioeconomic costs and degradation conditions in the Southwest China Biodiversity Hotspot

Ding

Zhe

et al. 2021

Envir. Conserv.

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Summary There have been calls for the expansion of protected areas (PAs) to tackle the ongoing biodiversity loss, yet it is unclear where future PAs might help to protect biodiversity in degraded landscapes under the conservation planning principles of complementarity, connectivity and cost-effectiveness. Our conservation goal is to increase the PA network coverage to up to 30% of the landscape of the Zhangjiang River Basin for target species in the karst area of southwest China, a global biodiversity hotspot. Zonation 4GUI was used to evaluate the adequacy of current PAs and to strategically expand PAs while maximizing the coverage of target species and considering ecological integrity and socioeconomic activities. The results show that significant habitat degradation has occurred across 77.9% of the basin. The current PAs cover 6.3% of the site and represent 8.7% of the total distribution of key species. With regards to the threshold of protection of 30% of the area, protecting an additional 27.2% of the site under an ecological integrity prioritization scenario and a scenario of the socioeconomic costs involved in iteration would cover 93.5% and 80.4% of the ranges of the key species, respectively. Our results can be used to inform the upcoming actions associated with karst area conservation-related policies.

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Substantial gaps between the protection of biodiversity hotspots in alpine grasslands and the effectiveness of protected areas on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, China

Cited by 36 publications

References 46 publications

Status and Challenges of Qinghai–Tibet Plateau’s Grasslands: An Analysis of Causes, Mitigation Measures, and Way Forward

Status and Challenges of Qinghai–Tibet Plateau’s Grasslands: An Analysis of Causes, Mitigation Measures, and Way Forward

Responses of Habitat Quality and Animal Biodiversity to Grazing Activities on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Spatial conservation prioritization considering socioeconomic costs and degradation conditions in the Southwest China Biodiversity Hotspot

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