State-of-the-art and challenges in global grassland degradation studies

Abstract

Grassland ecosystems are experiencing severe deterioration due to ongoing climate fluctuation and human disturbance. Although numerous research centers on the patterns, processes, and functioning of degraded grassland, there is still a lack of standards for defining and assessing degraded grassland, which restricts the cognition of the degraded grassland mechanisms and restoration practices. Therefore, we review current grassland degradation research for the sake of the common definitions and assessment methods worldwide. Grassland degradation definitions are divided into three stages, including biotic/abiotic factors, ecosystem functions, and ecosystem services/sustainability, and further combine the concept of “nature’s contributions to people” with the definition of grassland degradation. Moreover, grassland degradation assessment methods and indicators are diverse across scales. Additionally, we systematically explore the climate change and social system factors that affect grassland degradation, and reveal that grassland management policies play an essential role in grassland degradation and restoration. Overall, this review advances our understanding of grassland degradation and calls for a unified and effective global definition and assessment criteria, which will contribute to the sustainable management of the grassland ecosystem.

Keywords

Grassland degradation / Climate changes / Human activities / Grassland sustainable management

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Mengqi Zhang: Writing – original draft. Jian Sun: Writing – review & editing, Funding acquisition. Yi Wang: Visualization, Investigation. Yunhui Li: Validation, Methodology. Jieji Duo: Resources, Data curation.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Talent introduction program of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2024.08.008.

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