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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Earth Sci.

Sec. Interdisciplinary Climate Studies

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feart.2025.1614748

Assessing ecosystem health due to revegetation for a mountainous areas of Northern China

Provisionally accepted
Siyi  QuSiyi Qu1Shengping  WangShengping Wang1*Fan  ZhouFan Zhou1Wenxin  LiWenxin Li1Desheng  CaiDesheng Cai1Zhiqiang  ZhangZhiqiang Zhang2Peter  StraussPeter Strauss3Kewen  WangKewen Wang1Yiyao  LiuYiyao Liu1
  • 1North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China
  • 2Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, Beijing, China
  • 3Institute for Land and Water Management Research, Federal Agency for Water Management, Petzenkirchen, Austria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Assessing ecosystem health and understanding its potential environmental controls are critically important for effective revegetation of mountainous areas where multiple agents may constrain ecosystem health and ecosystem usually fragiled accordingly.We applied the VOR framework (vigor-organization-resilience model) to assess ecosystem health of a meso-scale mountainous watershed of northern China (Xiaoluan River watershed), and quantified environmental controls by integrating Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) and Multiscale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) techniques. We found that, with the proceeding of revegetation, ecosystem health of the watershed showed a slight improvement over 2006-2020 (p>0.05) , EHI varied from 0.49 to 0.57, and the ecosystem resilience (ER) remained relatively low, with the mean ER over the years being only 0.19. Additionally, Moran's I showed strong spatially positive autocorrelations, especially for the plant functional types (PFTs) of NETT (Needleleaf evergreen tree, temperate) and BDTT (Broadleaf deciduous tree, temperate), indicative of a proneness to abrupt transition in case of an environmental perturbation.Both OLS and GWR (including MGWR) models suggested that thermal stress and water stress both are primary constraints on the ecosystem health of the watershed, and at seasonal scales, their controls alter by season, with T dominating in the beginning of growing season, whilst P dominates in growing season, well characterizing the major process controlling EHI of mountainous watersheds in transitional zone of northern China. We concluded that, with intensified climate change and widely implemented revegetation, much more caution should be exercised regarding planted forest when implementing revegetation policies in the areas, in order to avoid possible ecosystem collapse in case of environmental perturbations, and to enhance ecosystem health of the areas.

Keywords: Ecosystem health assessment, Environmental controls, VOR framework, Geographically weighted regression (GWR) modelling, Mountainous watershed

Received: 19 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Qu, Wang, Zhou, Li, Cai, Zhang, Strauss, Wang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Shengping Wang, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China

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