The Stability of Revegetated Ecosystems in Sandy Areas: An Assessment and Prediction Index

Abstract

Abstract:The stability and sustainability of revegetated ecosystems is a central topic in ecological research. In this study, long-term monitoring and focused research on vegetation, soil and soil moisture from 2006 to 2012 were used to develop a model for evaluating indices of ecosystem stability using the analytical hierarchy process method. The results demonstrated that rainfall (R), vegetation coverage (C), and surface soil moisture (S) were the three most influential factors among the 14 indicators considered in a revegetated desert area in the Tengger Desert, China. A stability index (SI) was defined as SI = VAR (R) × VAR (C)/VAR (S), and a comparative study was conducted to examine the stability index of the natural vegetation community. The SI was divided into three regimes: SI < 0.006 was stable, 0.006 ≤ SI < 0.015 was semi-stable, and 0.015 ≤ SI was unstable. The stable, semi-stable and unstable periods of revegetated ecosystems in our simulations were 191, 17 and 11 years, respectively, within the total modeling period of 219 years. These results indicated that the revegetated desert ecosystem would be stable in most years during the vegetation succession, and this study presents new ideas for future artificial vegetation management in arid desert regions.

Utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Establish Weighted Values for Evaluating the Stability of Slope Revegetation based on Hydroseeding Applications in South Korea

“…The variables should be weighted relatively to how important each is for the structural stability of a particular revegetated slope [70]. Ideally, there should be a broad consensus among the experts on variables that determine the stability of a revegetated slope.…”

Ecosystem Services Valuation of Lakeside Wetland Park beside Chaohu Lake in China

“…Some surveys establish new models to assess the stability and sustainability of ecosystems [19,20]. Continuing research on complex interaction of wetland ecological services is significant in China, because the interaction of small scale wetland is closely related to residence factors which frequently affect human production activities.…”

Evaluating the stability of artificial sand-binding vegetation by combining statistical methods and a neural network model

“…Evaluating the stability of the ecosystem is one of the core topics in ecology, many researchers have proposed numerous methods to evaluate the stability of ecosystem 1 , 2 , 5 – 9 . In general, these methods can be mainly divided into dynamical system models 1 , 2 , 7 and empirical models 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 . Dynamical system models, including the Lotka–Volterra model 10 , 11 , vegetation pattern model 12 , 13 , soil moisture coupled with dynamic change of vegetation 2 , 14 , etc., were employed to investigate the stability of the ecosystem from the perspective of dynamical system theory; The empirical methods such as fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method 5 , analytic hierarchy process 6 , Godron method 15 , variable weight evaluation method 16 , etc., comprehensively evaluated the stability of the ecosystem by using the stability indexes that closely related to the structure and function of the ecosystem.…”

“…In general, these methods can be mainly divided into dynamical system models 1 , 2 , 7 and empirical models 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 . Dynamical system models, including the Lotka–Volterra model 10 , 11 , vegetation pattern model 12 , 13 , soil moisture coupled with dynamic change of vegetation 2 , 14 , etc., were employed to investigate the stability of the ecosystem from the perspective of dynamical system theory; The empirical methods such as fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method 5 , analytic hierarchy process 6 , Godron method 15 , variable weight evaluation method 16 , etc., comprehensively evaluated the stability of the ecosystem by using the stability indexes that closely related to the structure and function of the ecosystem. Both dynamical system models and empirical methods can be employed to evaluate the stability of ecosystems, but the theoretical results obtained by dynamical system models are difficult to be verified in reality 10 – 14 , and the empirical methods have the drawbacks that the weights of evaluation indexes are scored by experts 5 , 6 , 15 , 16 , the uncertainty of parameters may lead to inconsistency of evaluation results.…”

“…Stability is one of the basic characteristics of the ecosystem, and the definition of stability is diversified. E.g., the concepts including resistance, resilience, persistence, variability, local stability, global stability, structural stability, trajectory stability, constancy, relative stability, and set stability, etc., are used to describe ecosystem stability from different perspectives 6 . As a result, there is still no uniform standard for the measurement of ecosystem stability.…”