The development of Qingzang national park cluster is part of China’s efforts to establish a major ecological civilization project in the Qingzang Plateau, in line with global sustainable development goals. Based on preliminary scientific investigation and research in the Qingzang Plateau, the construction of the park cluster will include 21 national parks. To mitigate the conflict between conservation of the national park cluster and the development of local communities, this study proposes an analysis framework to identify the spatial coupling features between the national park cluster and sustainable development of communities. Four elements were selected to construct the analysis framework, including natural conditions, geographic location, cultural background, and national policies. This framework was applied to the 457 township communities within the 21 national parks. Results show the weak influence of the construction of the national park cluster for approximately 304 township communities, without significant spatial coupling traits, while the remaining 153 communities demonstrated significant spatial coupling features. These latter townships had developed four types of spatial coupling with national parks, including eco-migrants, transportation hubs, characteristic cultures, and border development, which account for 17.4%, 35.3%, 19.8%, and 27.5% of the 153 townships respectively. A composite type with more than one spatial coupling feature was also found for 14 communities within the 153 townships. This provides a reference for policy making towards four major types of interactive modes between townships and the national park construction for the sustainable development of Qingzang Plateau.
Widespread desertification in the middle part of the Yarlung Zangbo River (YZR) basin is threatening the sustainable development of this region. To capture this process, a method was proposed for large-scale desertification monitoring by using Landsat images from 1995 to 2019. The method used an integrated classification method combined with a hierarchical decision tree and nearest neighbor classifiers. The spatio-temporal dynamics of the desertification pattern were analyzed to assist in the detection of possible driving forces. Using validation samples collected from Google Earth high-resolution images and field investigations, the overall accuracy of the classification in 2019 was 92.3% with a Kappa coefficient of 0.84. The major results were: (1) total sandy land area in 2019 was 734.1 km2, which accounted for 3.7% of the study area, prominently distributed along the wide river valleys and inlets of tributaries with a strip and discontinuous pattern. Sandy land tends to be distributed in the southern aspect regions with lower elevations and that are closer to rivers; (2) sandy land areas showed two temporal stages: a gradual increase of 102.4 km2 from 1995 to 2015 and a large decrease of 106.8 km2 from 2015 to 2019; (3) newly increased sandy land was distributed in the YZR Valley, while the revegetation on sandy land occurred mainly in the Lhasa River basin and some regions in the YZR Valley; and (4) increased sandy land area of 142.1 km2 was mainly distributed in the southern band of the two rivers. Correspondingly, revegetation on sandy land was more effective on the northern banks of the river valleys. These findings provide guidance for implementing vegetation recovery on sandy lands and provide important insights for maintaining sustainable development.
Grain production space reconstruction referred to the changes in the quantity, quality and pattern of grain production space caused by functional tradeoffs and conflicts between grain production space, urban-rural development space, and ecological service space. Exploring tradeoffs between land system functions caused by grain production space reconstruction was particularly important for ensuring food security, promoting the construction of ecological civilization, and achieving sustainable development. Therefore, this study identified four relationships of land system functions during the process of grain production space reconstruction (1980-2018) in China by using Set Pair Analysis. Research results showed that the reconstruction of grain production space was achieved mainly through three pathways: Grain for Green, deforestation and reclamation, and urban expansion. Generally, ecological service had spatial negative correlation with grain production, economic development and population carrying capacity (P < 0.01), but grain production, economic development and population carrying capacity were positively correlated with each other (P < 0.01). In the process of grain production space reconstruction, ecological services and economic development, ecological services and population carrying capacity had all shown inverse synergies; there was a tradeoff between grain production and ecological services, a codirectional tradeoff between grain production and economic development, but a strong synergy between economic development and population carrying capacity. However, the functions of land systems only appeared as synergies or tradeoffs, and there were no inverse synergies and codirectional tradeoffs in the separate processes of Grain for Green, deforestation and reclamation, and urban expansion. It can be concluded that the relationships between land system functions were relatively simple in a single process, but it became complex and diverse when multiple processes were integrated for system analysis.
Water resources are a basic need for social sustainable development and human existence. As an important national strategy for water resources security, spatial and temporal patterns and driving mechanisms of water yield ecosystem services on the Qingzang Plateau (QP) are critical for water resources management, optimal water allocation and the improvement of ecological water protection efficiency. However, only a few relevant studies are currently available. In this study, we simulated the water yield (WY) of the QP over 34 years, from 1982 to 2015, using the InVEST model and analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamic relationships between WY and climate change as well as between WY and vegetation change, using geographically weighted regression (GWR) models. The results showed that: 1) from 1982 to 2015, the WY of the QP increased at an average rate of 3.8 mm/yr; 2) WY presented a reduced spatial pattern from southeast to northwest; and 3) the WY driving factors have individual and spatial differences. In terms of the area percentage in promoting WY when analyzing each driving factor, precipitation (99.8%) and air pressure (53.3%) played the major roles in promoting WY, while temperature (71.9%), wind speed (57.2%), net primary productivity (87.2%), radiation (68.3%) and lake (87.7%) played negative roles. The areas where WY are dominated by temperature are the largest (41.1%), and followed by areas dominated by pressure (19.7%) and precipitation (18.5%). The results of this study provide scientific support for formulating regional water resources policy, social and economic development planning and other macro decisions for the QP.
Besides its ecological services to China and even Asia, the Qingzang Plateau (QP) hosts a rich variety of wildlife species. During the last century, wildlife population decreased quickly on the QP, driven by human interventions. Recently, wildlife has witnessed rapid recovery mainly propelled by a series of wildlife conservation policies. However, some cautions merit attentions to sustain wildlife restoration and conservation on the QP. This paper casted an overview of environmental and social-economic changes on the QP affecting wildlife subsistence. Results show that QP has been warming, which can benefit wildlife recovery by easing extreme low temperature stresses. The fast growing social economy across the QP lays a solid economic foundation for investing on wildlife protection. Measures such as establishing conservation areas, constructing wildlife pathway corridors, and encouraging herdsman moving out from wildlife rich regions, have boosted wildlife recovery. However, wildlife recovery is constrained by the limited carrying capacity of the ecosystem, left by domestic livestock. Additionally, fences intended to delineate conservation areas or to separate each type of grassland use, have brought about profound side effects on wildlife through fragmentation of their habitats. It is recommended to set up the fence in a more ecological way, which can be achieved by bypassing the wildlife frequent pathway and using materials devoid of steel barb. Only considering both opportunities and problems simultaneously, can the wildlife protection on the QP be sustained.
Tourism impacts on society are complex and mixed. However, they are vital to diverse societies, clusters, and individuals dependent upon their morals, attitudes, and resources existing for tourism development. Increasing tourism also brings many problems. Hence, tourist experience is fundamental for destination image and development. This research examines tourist perceptions and attitudes toward tourism impacts in Chitkul, Kalpa, and Nako in Kinnaur. Random sampling has been used to measure tourist responses on a range of indicators related to tourism development. Likert scale responses were analyzed using factor analysis, ANOVA, Mann-Whitney U-test, Kolmogorov test, and descriptive statistics. The results confirmed that tourists do not perceive any type of pollution or societal barriers. They observed that natural magnetism and the socio-cultural milieu of the destination is what attracts tourists. However, tourists are not satisfied with ‘networking services’, ‘organization efforts’, ‘supplementary conveniences’, and ‘carriage concerns’ at selected destinations in Kinnaur. Moreover, Chitkul emerged as the top tourist destination in Kinnaur. Since the destination would emerge as a hub of tourist activities shortly considering the congestion and exploitation of nearby tourist destinations at Kulu-Manali-Rohtang in Beas Valley. Hence, the assessment of tourist perceptions can be used as an indicator of tourism destination competitiveness and can assist in developing appropriate tourism policies and infrastructure upgrades.
Many studies have examined the effect of roads on landscape fragmentation. Yet they rarely considered local characteristics of the road and road buffer widths. Therefore, this study that took place in the Qingzang Highway (QH) examined the variations in road buffers and road sections of landscape fragmentation. The QH was divided into 32 sections with 23 buffer areas. Based on the indicators of landscape fragmentation from 1980 to 2018, we found significant spatial heterogeneity between sections and buffers. Generally, landscape fragmentation decreased with increasing buffer distance to the QH. For different sections, the coefficients of variation between buffers were rather high and significantly different. Therefore, fixed-width buffers may overestimate or underestimate the spatial scope and influence intensity of a road. The impacts of road sections around provincial capitals, prefecture-level cities and main counties on landscape fragmentation were relatively extensive and formed clusters of highly fragmented areas. Geodetector results indicated that natural and anthropogenic factors, such as altitude, climate, distance to major settlements and socioeconomic conditions, could well explain the spatiotemporal characteristics of landscape fragmentation. Altitude, precipitation and the distance to major settlements had higher explanatory power for landscape fragmentation in permafrost regions, whereas slope and socioeconomic condition had higher explanatory power for non-permafrost regions in Xizang Autonomous Region.
The COVID-19 pandemic has stalled and rolled back progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ecosystem services (ESs), defined as the contributions of ecosystems to human well-being, underpin the achievement of SDGs. To promote SDG achievement in post-pandemic era, we teased out the links between ESs and SDGs while examining the impact of COVID-19. We found that ESs benefited all SDGs, yet man-made pressures led to degradation of ecosystems and their services. There is broad consensus that the virus lurks in degraded ecosystems and generates spillover due to human interference. The pandemic and global lockdown/restriction disrupted the flow of ESs and altered human ESs demand, threatening the efforts for the SDGs. We suggested: 1) to study the association and traceability of ESs-SDGs under the pandemic; 2) to prioritize pressing issues such as health care, livelihood, and resource security and in the long run, we should promote human-nature harmony to achieve the SDGs; and 3) to enhance ESs and to promote the SDGs through local community efforts, ESs accounting, and ecosystem restoration. This paper provides insights into the importance of ESs to the SDGs and the ways to integrate ESs into socio-economic development to promote the SDG achievement after the pandemic.
The impacts of climate change and human activities on vegetation dynamics have attracted wide attention, especially in sensitive and vulnerable areas such as the Qingzang Plateau of China. In this region, a series of ecological restoration projects have been launched while the effectiveness of these projects requires evaluation and further improvements. Remote sensing with high temporal resolution and spatial coverage is an effective way for the vegetation dynamics research in this region. In this study, the spatial and temporal distribution of climate factors and vegetation coverage as well as the influencing factors such as air temperature, precipitation, land use, slope, slope direction, soil and altitude were analyzed. The geographical detector was used to analyze the influence of climate factors on vegetation coverage and the interaction among factors in different eco-geographical regions. The results showed that: 1) the average values from the 20 years of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) decreased gradually from southeast (> 0.61) to northwest (0.12). The overall average of NDVI increased 0.02 per year from 1998 to 2018 and the impact factors varied among different eco-geographical regions; 2) some controlling factors showed nonlinear enhancement such as altitude and slope; 3) land use was an important factor affecting the distribution of vegetation especially in humid, semi-arid and arid areas, but the impacts of elevation and temperature were stronger than land use types in semi-humid and humid areas. The design and construction of ecological protection and restoration projects on the Qingzang Plateau required scientific and detailed demonstration as well as monitoring and evaluation. In addition, new tools and theories were also needed in the selection of ecosystem restoration strategies. Based on the findings, this study also provides suggestions for the sustainable ecological restoration on the Qingzang Plateau.