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Changes in land use and landscapes have a direct impact on the regional eco-environment. It is of great importance to understand the change pattern of land use, landscapes, and their mechanism on the ecological quality, especially ecologically fragile areas. The northern sand-prevention belt (NSPB) is an important ecologically fragile area in China, which has a large influence on the ecological security of the entire country. Based on the land use data of the NSPB in 2000, 2010, and 2018, we studied the spatio-temporal characteristics of land-use change and change in landscape patterns. The ecological quality represented by the remote sensing-based desertification index (RSDI) was calculated using satellite images. The effects of land use and landscape patterns on RSDI were analyzed by geographic detector and geographically weighted regression. Important results include the following: (1) Land-use change in the study area was high during 2000–2010 but slower in 2010–2018. Grassland was the largest land-use type in the NSPB, and varied greatly in terms of total change and spatial location. The major change was the conversion between dense and moderate grass, with 64,860 km2 of dense grass turning into moderate grass, and 48,505 km2 changing the other way. (2) Among the four landscape metrics, patch density, area-weighted mean fractal dimension, and edge density increased, whereas the aggregation index decreased, which indicated that the landscape was developing towards heterogeneity, fragmentation, complexity, and aggregation. Spatially, the landscape metrics presented a strip distribution in the east of the NSPB. (3) The effects of various land-use types on ecological quality, from high to low, were unused land, woodland, dense grass, cropland, moderate grass, built-up land, sparse grass, and waterbody. The areas where the ecological quality was greatly affected by the landscape patterns were concentrated in the agro-pastoral ecotone and the forest-steppe ecotone. The results of this study reveal the trends of land use and landscape patterns in the NSPB over 18 years and can help to understand their mechanism on ecological quality, which is of significance for the management of this area. • LUC in the NSPB was active from 2000 to 2010 and weakened from 2010 to 2018. • The landscape was developing towards heterogeneity, fragmentation, complexity, and aggregation. • The effects of land use and landscape on ecological quality were studied by GD and GWR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: State and local governments in China have implemented a series of grassland protection policies to address the problem of grassland degradation. In 2003, Ningxia was the first province to implement a province-wide grazing ban. The effect of this ban is contentious at all levels of government and has become a topic of public concern. Grassland desertification is the most direct indicator of the effect of the grazing ban. We selected 14 counties and cities in north-central Ningxia as the study area. A desertification classification and grading system for Ningxia's grassland was then designed based on fieldwork and expert review. Using the Spectral Mixture Analysis (SMA) and decision-tree methods, we interpreted Landsat TM/ETM+ images of the study area during four years: 1993, 2000, 2006 and 2011. The following results were obtained: from 1993 to 2011, the area of desertified grassland in north-central Ningxia decreased gradually from 8702km2 in 1993 to 7485km2 in 2011, a decrease of 13.98%; the degree of desertification gradually decreased from 3573km2 of severely desertified grassland in 1993 to 1450km2 in 2011, a decrease of 59.41%; desertified grassland vegetation was restored rapidly during 2000–2006 and 2006–2011, reducing the total area of desertified grassland annually by 1.87 and 0.61%, respectively; finally, the area of severely desertified grassland decreased annually by 5.78 and 6.28% during 2000–2006 and 2006–2011, respectively. These results show that the region-wide grazing ban, together with other ecological engineering measures, has helped reverse desertification and promote the restoration of grassland vegetation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• It was found that the agricultural land expanded significantly, desert reduced from 1993 to 2019 in the oasis region in Hotan River Basin, China. • The key indicators of the coupling system of vegetation–climate, soil-adjusted vegetation index, albedo, surface temperature, and evapotranspiration were calculated and mapped their spatial-temporal dynamics. • We investigated how the different landscape patterns altered the interaction between vegetation and climate in the desert oasis ecosystem and quantified the effects with structural equation model. In the arid region, the oasis is characterized by a desert substance and a mosaic of vegetation. The biophysical processes and interactions between vegetation and the local climate in this kind of region are determined by the macroscopic structure of the ecosystems, i.e. landscape patterns. To understand how these landscape patterns impact regional hydro-heat coupling across space and evolve over time, we utilized remote sensing observational data and methods to examine the relationships among these factors. In this case, we focused on the oasis along the upstream of the Hotan River Basin in the Taklamakan Desert in Xinjiang of western China and employed the satellite imagery datasets of Landsat from 1993 to 2019 to investigate the dynamics of vegetation–climate factors. Based on the land use and cover change datasets, the landscape pattern metrics, including patch density (PD), contagion index (CONTAG), fractal dimension (FRAC), were calculated to measure the landscape features on the different aspects, i.e. the fragmentation, the connectivity, and the complexity. With the algorithm of land surface energy balance, the land surface indicators, including the soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAV I), albedo, surface irradiance temperature (T s), and evapotranspiration (ET), were calculated to represent the key process in the interaction of vegetation–climate. The temporal-spatial dynamics of the landscape patterns and the vegetation–climate metrics were mapped and demonstrated in a quantitative manner. The statistical results revealed that during the past decades, the agricultural land in the study area had significantly increased by 17 %. Grassland and shrubs had also expanded, while the desert area decreased from 82.57 % to 78.82 % of the total area, with an overall reduction rate of 1.4 %/10a. It was found the study area was getting warmer and dryer based on the general trends of T s and ET observed during the period of 1993–2019. The agricultural land had the highest PD and CONTAG , and the lowest FRAC. The agricultural land had the lowest T s and the highest ET. The results of structural equation model identified the decoupling effects of PD and CONTAG on the regional hydro-heat environment, while confirmed that FRAC had positive impact on the coupling between T s and ET. Our study bridged the landscape pattern with the regional vegetation–climate interaction and provided the suggestions for the landscape planning and management for a more sustainable arid region. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shrub encroachment, characterized by the proliferation of shrubs into grasslands, is a challenge faced by grasslands worldwide that significantly impacts livestock production and ecosystem functions. Rapid and accurate estimation of shrub dominance is important for understanding changes in plant community structures and formulating grassland management policies. However, the limited spatial resolution of commonly used satellite imagery poses a challenge when estimating shrub dominance at the landscape scale. The rapid development of Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has opened up new opportunities for cross-scale observations of shrub encroachment in grasslands by effectively bridging the scale gap between ground sampling and satellite image pixels while reducing the required groundwork. This study utilized ground reference data, UAV data (RGB, hyperspectral, and LiDAR), and satellite data (Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2) to estimate shrub and total above-ground biomass (AGB) in temperate grasslands to map the shrub dominance. First, UAV data were applied at the plot scale for the classification of shrub and herbaceous vegetation using the maximum entropy model (MaxEnt), estimation of shrub AGB by employing the vegetation index weighted canopy volume model (CVM VI), and estimation of herbaceous AGB based on the partial least squares regression (PLSR). Second, UAV AGB mapping results were upscaled as samples at the landscape scale and integrated with satellite imagery to establish the shrub and total AGB models using the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost). Finally, shrub dominance, represented as shrub AGB/total AGB, was mapped across the study area. We found that at the plot scale, the MaxEnt model achieved an overall accuracy of 0.990 for object-based classification. The CVM VI combined with canopy height model and narrow-band vegetation index achieved the highest accuracy for estimating shrub AGB (R2 = 0.821, RMSE = 30.1 g). The PLSR combined with features derived from all UAV data achieved the highest accuracy for estimating herbaceous AGB (R2 = 0.856, RMSE = 9.1 g/m2). At the landscape scale, the XGBoost achieved high accuracy for estimating both the shrub AGB (R2 = 0.719, RMSE = 4.2 g/m2) and total AGB (R2 = 0.961, RMSE = 5.0 g/m2). The high-precision mapping results further facilitate the generation of shrub dominance maps at a landscape scale. This study presents a more accurate and efficient framework for mapping shrub AGB, total AGB, and shrub dominance using multi-scale remote sensing data, which offers new approaches for large-scale grassland AGB mapping and monitoring of shrub encroachment in grasslands. • Multisensory UAV data were evaluated for shrub and herbaceous AGB estimation at the plot scale. • SAR and multispectral satellite data were used to map AGB and shrub dominance at the landscape scale. • Our multi-scale framework outperformed the traditional AGB estimation method. • Assessing shrub dominance is important for understanding shrub encroachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]