Did ecological engineering projects have a significant effect on large-scale vegetation restoration in Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region, China? A remote sensing approach

Did ecological engineering projects have a significant effect on large-scale vegetation restoration in Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region, China? A remote sensing approach

Chinese Geographical Science

Aiming for the restoration of degraded ecosystems, many ecological engineering projects have been implemented around the world. This study investigates the ecological engineering project effectiveness on vegetation restoration in the Beijing-Tianjin Sand Source Region (BTSSR) from 2000 to 2010 based on the rain use efficiency (RUE) trend in relation to the land cover. More than half of the BTSSR experienced a vegetation productivity increase from 2000 to 2010, with the increasing intensity being sensitive to the indicators chosen. A clear tendency towards smaller increasing areas was shown when using the net primary productivity (NPP, 51.30%) instead of the accumulated normalized difference vegetation index (59.30%). The short-term variation in the precipitation and intra-seasonal precipitation distribution had a great impact on the remote sensing-based vegetation productivity. However, the residual trends method (RESTREND) effectively eliminated this correlation, while incorporating the variance and skewness of the precipitation distribution increased the models′ ability to explain the vegetation productivity variation. The RUE combined with land cover dynamics was valid for the effectiveness assessment of the ecological engineering projects on vegetation restoration. Particularly, the result based on growing season accumulated normalized difference vegetation index (ΣNDVI) residuals was the most effective, showing that 47.39% of the BTSSR experienced vegetation restoration from 2000 to 2010. The effectiveness of the ecological engineering projects differed for each subarea and was proportional to the strength of ecological engineering. The water erosion region dominated by woodland showed the best restoration, followed by the wind-water erosion crisscross regions, while the wind erosion regions dominated by grassland showed the worst effect. Seriously degraded regions still cover more area in the BTSSR than restored regions. Therefore, more future effort should be put in restoring degraded land.