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Restoration action is critical to ensure a safe environment for humans. Reasonable planning is essential to optimize the efficiency of ecological restoration inputs and outputs when implementing restoration measures. In this study, a method that combines human activity intensity assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis to determine ecological restoration priority (ERP) areas was developed to identify priority and feasible areas for ecological restoration in Shaanxi Province in 2020. The results showed that the total area involved in restoration feasibility assessment in Shaanxi is 10.89 × 104 km2. Among them, the percentage of regions with low feasibility (less than 0.2) is 68.86%, mainly located in Qinling area. High feasibility areas (more than 0.6) accounted for 2.47%, mainly located in the Loess Plateau area of northern Shaanxi. The spatial distribution of the human activity intensity is concentrated in urban areas and extended with the distribution of roads. In total, 10.69% of the regions showed high and very high intensity of human activity, including the Guanzhong urban agglomeration region. This study identified 6078 km2 and 671 km2 of medium and high ecological restoration priority areas, which are more concentrated in the north of the study area. The need for ecological restoration work is even more urgent in northern Shaanxi. In general, the framework in this study has spatially located the priority and feasible areas for restoration, and may provide a useful reference for landscape-scale spatial conservation planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great efforts have been made to control soil erosion by restoring plant communities in degraded ecosystems world-wide. However, soil erosion has not been substantially reduced mainly because current restoration strategies lead to large areas of mono-specific vegetation, which are inefficient in reducing soil erosion because of their simple canopy and root structure. Therefore, an advanced understanding of how community functional composition affects soil erosion processes, as well as an improved restoration scheme to reduce soil erosion, is urgently needed., We investigated the effect of community functional composition on soil erosion in restored semi-arid grasslands on the Loess Plateau of China. Community functional composition of 16 restored grasslands was quantified by community-weighted mean ( CWM) and functional diversity ( FD) trait values, which were calculated from nine plant functional traits of thirteen locally dominant plant species. Species richness and evenness were also measured. Soil erosion rates were measured using standard erosion plots. The multimodel inference approach was used to estimate the direction and the relative importance of these biodiversity indices in reducing soil erosion., A robust and strong negative effect of functional divergence ( FDiv) on soil erosion was found. The prevalence of particular trait combinations can also decrease soil erosion. The greatest control over soil erosion was exerted when the community mean root diameter was small and the root tensile strength was great., Synthesis and applications: These findings imply that community functional diversity plays an important role in reducing soil erosion in semi-arid restored grasslands. This means that current restoration strategies can be greatly improved by incorporating community functional diversity into restoration design. We propose a trait-based restoration framework for reducing soil erosion, termed ' SSM' (Screening-Simulating-Maintaining). SSM aims to translate the target of community functional diversity into community assemblages that can be manipulated by practitioners. Based on this framework, a comprehensive procedure, highlighting functional diversity as the primary concern in determining optimal community assemblages, was developed to meet the pressing need for more effective restoration strategies to reduce soil erosion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] A redline paradigm has evolved in environmental governance for the greening of China. [•] Overlaps exist among current conservation redlines that compete with other land uses. [•] Such overlaps and competitions lead to conflicts violating redline practicality. [•] We provided four recommendations for ensuring redline management effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With extensive ecological restoration combating land degradation, known negative effects have caused these measures to shift from widespread vegetation planting to detailed structural reengineering. The specific type and quantity of ecological land have thus become the core issue of future ecological restoration to provide more ecological functions and resist land degradation. This requires adequate landscape structure analysis to identify appropriate patterns for harmonizing multiple ecosystem services (ESs). Identifying how the forest-to-grassland ratio (FGrat) affects ES correlation (EScor) can thus assist in such detailed ecological restoration in dryland regions. During landscape planning, the scale effect is also a problem that must be considered. In this paper, the changes in the trade-offs or synergies of three critical ESs (i.e., soil retention (SR), water yield (WY), and carbon sequestration (CS)) were compared and analyzed at three scales (grid, township and county) during 2000–2020 on the Loess Plateau (LP), which is a typical dryland region. Then, the responses of the EScors to time and the FGrat were analyzed via threshold identification in the different eco-regions. The results show that the direction and change trend of most EScors in different eco-regions were similar at each spatial scale over the past 20 years. Decreased synergy and increased trade-offs can be seen in the EScors of SR-WY and SR-CS in most regions. With the growth of vegetation and natural recovery, the EScors in plain area (PA) and earth-rocky mountainous area (EM) changed from having different trends to being similar to those in other eco-regions, which indicates that natural restoration gradually harmonizes vegetation coverage and naturally regulates the EScors. This highlights the importance of ecological restoration measures that should be based on natural situations. Moreover, the turning points of EScors between SR and WY mostly occurred around 2005 and were affected by artificial ecological restoration. The turning points of the EScors related to CS mainly occurred after 2010 and was also affected by vegetation growth and natural restoration. Spatially, most EScors were synergistic and strengthened as the scale increases, and most of the thresholds response to FGrat identified revealed no significant scale effects, which is significant and conducive to cross-scale research on the planning and management of ecological restoration in drylands. We also identified different FGrat thresholds in six eco-regions with different landscape structures and local environments. When the FGrat thresholds do not change significantly with scale, such as in the response of SR-CS or WY-CS to the FGrats, ecological restoration should mainly consider regional differences rather than scale. This study improves our understanding of how interactions between ESs depend on spatial scales and can inform decision-makers about how to control the FGrat to improve the reliability and sustainability of regional ecological restoration. • The relationship between forest-to-grassland ratio and ecosystem service correlations assists in detailed ecological restoration. • Thresholds of ecosystem service correlation response to forest-to-grassland ratio are spatiotemporal dependent without spatial scale effect. • Natural restoration gradually harmonizes vegetation coverage and naturally regulates the ecosystem service correlation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Identifying ecological restoration priority areas of Qinghai-Tibet plateau. • A framework integrating ecological security and restoration feasibility. • Realize the spatial location of restoration areas. • Priority areas are mainly concentrated in the southwest of the QTP. Ecological restoration is the guarantee of regional ecological security. Accurate identification of restoration areas is crucial for planning ecological programs. However, the question of how to recognize the range of restoration areas at the pixel scale in order to improve restoration efficiency still requires further discussion. In this study, a framework that integrates ecological security and feasibility of restoration through multi-criteria decision analysis was developed to identify the ecological restoration priority areas (ERPAs) in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The results showed that areas with low ecological security accounted for 58.33 % of the QTP, primarily concentrated in the northwest. Areas that were feasible to be restored, represented 26.11 % of the QTP. The relatively high feasibility areas (F > 0.6) were mainly located in the northern and southwestern of the QTP, covering 23.88 % of the total feasible areas. This study ultimately identified 6.69 × 105 km2 of ERPAs, encompassing 26.05 % of the QTP. The high-priority areas were concentrated in the southwest and scattered in the northern part of the study area, accounting for 21.47 % of the ERPAs. The low-priority areas with the largest proportion (57.77 % of ERPAs) were widely distributed in the eastern part of the study area. Therefore, more attention should be paid to the southwestern region of the QTP in the subsequent ecological restoration efforts. The framework, which takes into consideration ecological security and restoration feasibility, can significantly enhance the spatial accuracy of ecological restoration area identification, providing a practical reference for further environmental optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]