Ecological restoration priority on the Qinghai‒Xizang Plateau based on the nature’s contributions to people under SDGs-SSPs scenarios

Abstract

Ecological restoration is considered an important way to mitigate ecosystem degradation and improve regional nature’s contributions to people (NCPs). Ecological planning is a prerequisite for ecological restoration and the prevention of future ecological risks. However, few studies have focused on integrating ecological plans within the framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs). In this study, taking the Qinghai‒Xizang Plateau (QXP) as a case, we assessed ecological restoration priorities based on NCPs under various SDGs and SSP scenarios. Specifically, the land use demand was predicted using system dynamics (SD) and cellular automata (CA) models between 2030 and 2060 under SDG-SSP scenarios. In addition, habitat maintenance (NCP1), climate regulation (NCP4), and water quantity regulation (NCP6) were assessed based on the predicted land use. Finally, priority areas for ecological restoration were identified using a zonation model. The results indicated that the grassland, forest, and cultivated areas will increase in the SDGs and SSPs scenarios, respectively. The high-value NCP areas are mainly located in the southeast part of the QXP, accounting for 45.16 % of the study area. In addition, the ecological restoration area involves grassland, cultivated and bare land. In the single-objective scenario, NCP1, NCP4, and NCP6 can be improved by 30.29 %, 28.75 % and 25.63 %, respectively, through the restoration of 15.33 % of the priority areas identified in 2015. When shifting to a multi-objective cooperative optimum, NCP1, NCP4 and NCP6 can be improved 35.79 % by restoring 54.96 % of the priority areas. This study provides insight into how SDGs and SSPs can contribute to ecological restoration for mitigating ecosystem degradation under SDG-SSP scenarios.

Keywords

System dynamics / Cellular automata / Sustainable development goals / Nature’s contribution to people / Shared socioeconomic pathways / Priority area

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Hua Liu: Writing – original draft, Resources, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Shiliang Liu: Writing – review & editing, Project administration, Conceptualization. Fangfang Wang: Writing – review & editing, Investigation. Yifei Zhao: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization. Yuhong Dong: Writing – review & editing. Lam-Son Phan Tran: Writing – review & editing.

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 second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (Grant No. 2019QZKK0405) and the National Key Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2022YFF1303204) of the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant No. 42271097).

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100325.

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