64 Results Found

Vegetation coverage is important in global landscape change patterns, but research on temporal and spatial dynamic changes and analysis of vegetation landscape pattern is relatively lacking. The present study aimed to investigate the dynamic changes...

Based on temporal and spatial dynamic data on land use in the arid desert region of Northwest China from 1990 to 2020, this study quantitatively analyzed and predicted future scenarios of the dynamic distribution pattern of land use using remote sens...

As decision-making tools helping to improve the understanding of soil quality, soil quality assessment and heavy metal pollution assessment are very important for the remediation of heavy metal soil pollution. In the past, soil quality and heavy meta...

Exploring how functional traits vary along environmental gradients has long been one of the central questions of trait-based community ecology. Variation in functional traits includes both intraspecific trait variation (ITV) and interspecific trait v...

The stability of soil aggregates is the basis for supporting ecosystem functions and related services provided by the soil. In order to explore the mechanism of the influence of soil and vegetation properties on the stability of soil aggregates in de...

The preservation and enhancement of ecosystem services are essential for maintaining ecological balance and sustainable growth. The Heihe River Basin (HRB) is important for ecological security in Northwest China, yet is a fragile ecological environme...

Verrucariaceae is the third-largest lichen family with high species diversity. However, this diversity has not been well-explored in China. We carried out a wide-scale field investigation in the arid and semi-arid regions of Northwest China from 2017...

Drought is one of the most destructive natural disasters in China and can cause serious environmental and socio-economic impacts. Based on monthly precipitation and temperature data from 571 meteorological stations, the Standardized Precipitation Eva...

The arid and semi-arid regions of northwest China are characterized by sparse vegetation and fragile ecosystems, making them highly susceptible to the impacts of climate change and human activities. Based on observed meteorological data, the Normaliz...

China has experienced dramatic changes in its land use and landscape pattern in the past few decades. At present, a large number of studies have carried out in-depth and systematic analyses on the landscape variation and its ecological effects in Cen...

The joint impacts of historical geological events and Quaternary climatic oscillations in Northwest China on species evolution have been examined extensively in plant under a phylogeographic perspective. However, animal phylogeographic analyses in th...

Mining activities have led to serious environmental (soil erosion, degradation of vegetation, and groundwater contamination) and human health (musculoskeletal problems, diarrheal conditions, and chronic diseases) issues at desert mining areas in nort...

Desertification, a current serious global environmental problem, has caused ecosystems and the environment to degrade. The total area of desertified land is about 1.72 million km² in China, which is extensively affected by desertification. Estimating...

Research on endophytic fungi in desert plants, particularly the epiphytic or endophytic fungi of leaves, remains limited. In the extremely arid regions of northwest China, the ultra-xerophytic desert plant Haloxylon ammodendron harbors white fungi on...

As a critical ecological barrier in the arid and semi-arid regions of northwestern China, the spatio-temporal evolution of vegetation carbon sequestration in the Hexi Corridor is of great significance to the ecological security of this region. Based...

In recent years, China’s “greening” trend has drawn great attention. However, does this truly represent ecological improvement? This study aims to figure it out on the mountain–oasis–desert ecosystem in the rid region of...

It is a difficult and hot issue in the hydrological studies of arid areas to choose suitable methods to evaluate the recharge of atmospheric precipitation to groundwater and its response to climate change in desert areas. This study reviews the theor...

Aerosol optical properties and radiative forcing critically influence Earth’s climate, particularly in semi-arid regions. This study investigates these properties in Yinchuan, Northwest China, focusing on aerosol optical depth (AOD), single-sca...

Recently, a wide range of quantitative research on the identification of environmental flow requirements (EFRs) has been conducted. However, little focus is given to EFRs to maintain multiple ecosystem services in oasis areas. The present study quant...

This study quantitatively analyzes the effects of flooding on the growth and species diversity of riparian forests along the Yarkant River and the Tarim River, Xinjiang, in northwest China, and provides important information for the efficient utiliza...

Accelerating climate change poses significant risks to water security and ecological stability in arid regions due to the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events. As a climate-sensitive area, the inland river basin (IRB) of...

Dryland degradation increasingly compromises ecosystem stability, food production, and regional development. Clarifying its long-term evolutionary patterns and regional variations is therefore essential for formulating targeted management strategies....

Surface water–groundwater interactions within oasis–desert ecotones of arid regions play a pivotal role in sustaining regional water security and ecological stability. Taking the Niya River Basin in Xinjiang, Northwest China, as a represe...

Significant temporal and spatial variability in soil moisture (SM) is observed during the warm season in China and its surrounding regions. Because of the existence of two different evapotranspiration regimes, i.e., soil moisture-limited and energy-l...

Ecosystems in arid areas are under pressure from human activities and the natural environment. Long-term monitoring and evaluation of arid ecosystems are essential for achieving the goal of sustainable development. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Regio...

The Taklimakan Desert in Northwest China is the major source of dust storms in China. The northeast edge of this desert is a typical arid area which houses a fragile oasis eco-environment. Frequent dust storms cause harmful effects on the oasis ecosy...

Although we are in an era of enormous global commitments to ecological restoration (the UN Decade on ER; the Bonn Challenge), little attention has been paid to the importance of sustained commitment to individual restoration initiatives and few resou...

Over the vast Northwest China, arid desert contains high concentrations of sulfate, chloride, and other chemicals in the ground water, which poses serious challenges to infrastructure construction that routinely utilizes portland cement concrete. Rap...

Nitraria tangutorum (Zygophyllaceae) is an ecologically and economically valuable shrub, locally dominant in the arid and semi-arid deserts of northwest China owing to its exceptional drought resistance and salt tolerance. In this study, environmenta...

The Temperature-Vegetation-Precipitation Drought Index (TVPDI) performs poorly in complex terrain due to Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) saturation and land surface temperature (LST) retrieval inaccuracies. To address this, we adopted a...

Haloxylon ammodendron plantations constitute a dominant vegetation component of the desert–oasis ecotone in the arid and semi-arid regions of northwest China, playing a critical role in maintaining oasis stability and ecological security. Howev...

Enclosure is an effective practice for restoring and rehabilitating the degraded grassland ecosystem caused by overgrazing. Shrub species, which are dominant in most desert grasslands in arid and semiarid regions, have some beneficial ecological func...

Oasis landscape change and its pattern dynamics are considered one of the vital research areas on global land use and landscape change in arid regions. An agricultural oasis is the main site of food security and ecosystem services in arid areas. Rece...

Climate change has been thought to drive the accelerated expansion of global drylands. However, many studies reveal that Arid Central Asia (ACA) has been warming and wetting in recent decades, representing an anomalous response to global climate chan...

The influence of Quaternary climate fluctuation on the geographical structure and genetic diversity of species distributed in the regions of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP) has been well established. However, the underlying role of the East Asi...

As one of the ways to achieve carbon neutralization, shrub biomass plays an important role for natural resource management decision making in arid regions. To investigate biomass dynamic variations of Caragana korshinskii, a typical shrub found in th...

Changes in climate extremes have a profound impact on vegetation growth. In this study, we employed the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and a recently published climate extremes dataset (HadEX3) to study the temporal and spatial...

Afforestation is a widely used method of controlling desertification globally as it significantly impacts the soil quality, microbial community structure, and function. Investigating the effects of various artificial vegetation restoration models on...

Populus euphratica is a key community-building species in the desert riparian forests of Northwest China, exhibiting exceptional resistance to stress and playing a vital role in soil and water conservation as well as maintaining ecological balance in...

Irrigated farmland is the main food source of desert areas, and moisture is the main limiting factor of desert farmland crop productivity. Study on the influence of irrigation on desert farmland soil moisture can guide the agricultural water resource...

Carbon management in forests has become the most important agenda of the first half of the 21st century in China in the context of the mitigation of climate change impact. As the main producer of the inland river basin ecosystem in arid region of Nor...

Plastic mulch is extensively applied in agricultural production in arid regions. It significantly influences the interactions between land and atmosphere by altering underlying surface characteristics. An accurate and timely extraction method for Pla...

Haloxylon ammodendron is a keystone shrub widely used for ecological restoration in arid regions of Northwest China. However, how rhizosphere bacterial communities reorganize across stand ages remains poorly understood. Rhizosphere soils were collect...

Cluster analyses, potential source contribution function (PSCF) and concentration-weight trajectory (CWT) were used to identify the main transport pathways and potential source regions with hourly PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ concentrations in different seasons fr...

As the largest inland river basin in China’s extremely arid region, the stability of the groundwater–vegetatifon system in the Tarim River Basin is crucial for the consolidation of the ecological security barrier in the northwest. To reve...

Aerosol optical depth (AOD) is an important physical variable used to characterize atmospheric turbidity for the management and control of air pollution. This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the spatial and temporal variability in AOD a...

Ebinur Lake Watershed, with its oases and deserts, is a typically arid and mountainous region on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains. Along with ever increasing human activities, agricultural and domestic wastes have been directly discharged int...

Accumulated evidence reminds one that abrupt transitions between dry and wet spells, though attracting less attention, have harmful influences upon global continents as extensively investigated droughts and floods. This study attempts to incorporate...

The Arid Region of Northwest China (ARNC) functions as a critical ecological barrier for the Eurasian hinterland. To clarify the non-linear drivers of eco-environmental dynamics, a long-term (2000–2024) Remote Sensing Ecological Index (RSEI) ti...

The Tarim Basin in Xinjiang is located in the northwest inland arid region of China, but research shows that the region is rich in groundwater resources. To understand the hydrochemical characteristics and water quality of shallow groundwater in the...