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Urban vegetation experiences multiple natural and human impacts during urbanization, including land conversion, local environmental factors, and human management, which may bring positive or negative impacts on vegetation gross primary productivity (GPP) at multiple scales. In this study, we analyzed the spatial-temporal changes of GPP and three urbanization factors: land urbanization (impervious surface coverage), population urbanization (Population), and economic urbanization Gross domestic product (GDP) at city-district-grid scales in Beijing during 2000–2018. Overall, both GPP and three urbanization factors showed an increased trend. The relationships between GPP and urbanization factors exhibit diverse characteristics at multiple scales: unlike the linear relationship observed at city scale, the relationships at district and grid scales all demonstrated nonlinear relationship, even a U shape between GPP and population/GDP. Furthermore, the positive impact of urbanization on GPP increased and offset the negative impact of land conversion from 9.9% in 2000 to 35% in 2018, indicating that urban management and climate during urbanization effectively promote vegetation photosynthesis and neutralize the negative impact of urban area expansion. Our findings highlight the increased growth offset by urbanization on vegetation and the importance of analysis at a finer scale. Understanding these urbanization types’ impact on vegetation is pivotal in formulating comprehensive strategies that foster sustainable urban development and preserve ecological balance.

 

With increasing livestock production due to high demand for consumption, the planted area of green fodder, an essential livestock supplement, has grown rapidly and will continue to grow in China. However, the climate feedback of this rapid land cover conversion is still unclear. Using multisource data (e.g. remote sensing observation and meteorological data), we compared the land surface temperature of green fodder plantation areas and native grassland in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau. The green fodder area was detected to be cooler than the native grassland by −0.54 ± 0.98 °C in the daytime throughout the growing season. The highest magnitude (−1.20 ± 1.68 °C) of cooling was observed in August. A nonradiative process, indicated by the energy redistribution factor, dominated the cooling effects compared to the radiative process altered by albedo variation. The results indicate the potential cooling effects of increasing green fodder area on native grassland, highlighting the necessity of investigating climate feedback from anthropogenic land use change, including green fodder expansion.

 

Ecosystem restoration is an important means to address global sustainability challenges. However, scientific and policy discourse often overlooks the social processes that influence the equity and effectiveness of restoration interventions. In the present article, we outline how social processes that are critical to restoration equity and effectiveness can be better incorporated in restoration science and policy. Drawing from existing case studies, we show how projects that align with local people's preferences and are implemented through inclusive governance are more likely to lead to improved social, ecological, and environmental outcomes. To underscore the importance of social considerations in restoration, we overlay existing global restoration priority maps, population, and the Human Development Index (HDI) to show that approximately 1.4 billion people, disproportionately belonging to groups with low HDI, live in areas identified by previous studies as being of high restoration priority. We conclude with five action points for science and policy to promote equity-centered restoration.

 

Urbanization affects vegetation within city administrative boundary and nearby rural areas. Gross primary production (GPP) of vegetation in global urban areas is one of important metrics for assessing the impacts of urbanization on terrestrial ecosystems. To date, very limited data and information on the spatial-temporal dynamics of GPP in the global urban areas are available. In this study, we reported the spatial distribution and temporal dynamics of annual GPP during 2000–2016 from 8,182 gridcells (0.5° by 0.5° latitude and longitude) that have various proportion of urban areas. Approximately 79.3% of these urban gridcells had increasing trends of annual GPP during 2000-2016. As urban area proportion (%) within individual urban gridcells increased, the means of annual GPP trends also increased. Our results suggested that for those urban gridcells, the negative effect of urban expansion (often measured by impervious surfaces) on GPP was to large degree compensated by increased vegetation within the gridcells, mostly driven by urban management and local climate and environment. Our findings on the continued increases of annual GPP in most of urban gridcells shed new insight on the importance of urban areas on terrestrial carbon cycle and the potential of urban management and local climate and environment on improving vegetation in urban areas. 

Abstract. Data and knowledge of surface water bodies (SWB), including large lakes andreservoirs (surface water areas > 1 km2), are critical forthe management and sustainability of water resources. However, the existingglobal or national dam datasets have large georeferenced coordinate offsetsfor many reservoirs, and some datasets have not reported reservoirs andlakes separately. In this study, we generated China's surface water bodies,Large Dams, Reservoirs, and Lakes (China-LDRL) dataset by analyzing allavailable Landsat imagery in 2019 (19 338 images) in Google Earth Engine andvery-high spatial resolution imagery in Google Earth Pro. There were∼ 3.52 × 106 yearlong SWB polygons in China for2019, only 0.01 × 106 of them (0.43 %) were of large size(> 1 km2). The areas of these large SWB polygons accountedfor 83.54 % of the total 214.92 × 103 km2 yearlongsurface water area (SWA) in China. We identified 2418 large dams, including624 off-stream dams and 1794 on-stream dams, 2194 large reservoirs (16.35 × 103 km2), and 3051 large lakes (73.38 × 103 km2). In general, most of the dams and reservoirs in Chinawere distributed in South China, East China, and Northeast China, whereasmost of lakes were located in West China, the lower Yangtze River basin, andNortheast China. The provision of the reliable, accurate China-LDRL dataseton large reservoirs/dams and lakes will enhance our understanding of waterresources management and water security in China. The China-LDRL dataset ispublicly available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16964656.v3 (Wang et al., 2021b).