Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs
In response to extreme societal consequences of ecosystem degradation and climate change, attention to ecological restoration is increasing globally. In China, investments in restoration exceeded USD 378.5 billion over the past decade. However, restoration programs are experiments that can cause mar...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
American Association for the Advancement of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8011961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33789907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf8650 |
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author | Li, Ruonan Zheng, Hua O’Connor, Patrick Xu, Huashan Li, Yunkai Lu, Fei Robinson, Brian E. Ouyang, Zhiyun Hai, Yue Daily, Gretchen C. |
author_facet | Li, Ruonan Zheng, Hua O’Connor, Patrick Xu, Huashan Li, Yunkai Lu, Fei Robinson, Brian E. Ouyang, Zhiyun Hai, Yue Daily, Gretchen C. |
author_sort | Li, Ruonan |
collection | PubMed |
description | In response to extreme societal consequences of ecosystem degradation and climate change, attention to ecological restoration is increasing globally. In China, investments in restoration exceeded USD 378.5 billion over the past decade. However, restoration programs are experiments that can cause marked unintended consequences, with trade-offs across space and time that have undergone little empirical examination. We quantified the long-term effects of large-scale afforestation for soil erosion and sandstorm prevention in semiarid China. We found that soil erosion was notably reduced by afforestation but surface runoff declined significantly, after a time lag of 18 years, limiting overall benefit. While forest area also increased, forest quality declined, interacting with reduced surface water runoff. Crucially, increased forest water consumption accelerated downstream groundwater depletion, thus intensifying conflicts over water use. The time lags and spatial trade-offs revealed by this case study provide critical lessons for large-scale restoration programs globally. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8011961 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | American Association for the Advancement of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80119612021-04-13 Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs Li, Ruonan Zheng, Hua O’Connor, Patrick Xu, Huashan Li, Yunkai Lu, Fei Robinson, Brian E. Ouyang, Zhiyun Hai, Yue Daily, Gretchen C. Sci Adv Research Articles In response to extreme societal consequences of ecosystem degradation and climate change, attention to ecological restoration is increasing globally. In China, investments in restoration exceeded USD 378.5 billion over the past decade. However, restoration programs are experiments that can cause marked unintended consequences, with trade-offs across space and time that have undergone little empirical examination. We quantified the long-term effects of large-scale afforestation for soil erosion and sandstorm prevention in semiarid China. We found that soil erosion was notably reduced by afforestation but surface runoff declined significantly, after a time lag of 18 years, limiting overall benefit. While forest area also increased, forest quality declined, interacting with reduced surface water runoff. Crucially, increased forest water consumption accelerated downstream groundwater depletion, thus intensifying conflicts over water use. The time lags and spatial trade-offs revealed by this case study provide critical lessons for large-scale restoration programs globally. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2021-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8011961/ /pubmed/33789907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf8650 Text en Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Articles Li, Ruonan Zheng, Hua O’Connor, Patrick Xu, Huashan Li, Yunkai Lu, Fei Robinson, Brian E. Ouyang, Zhiyun Hai, Yue Daily, Gretchen C. Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title | Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title_full | Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title_fullStr | Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title_full_unstemmed | Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title_short | Time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
title_sort | time and space catch up with restoration programs that ignore ecosystem service trade-offs |
topic | Research Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8011961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33789907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf8650 |
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