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Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance

Maintaining healthy ecosystems is essential to ensure sustainable socio-economic development. Studies combining remote sensing data with grassland health assessments, extensively performed at different scales, are important for monitoring grassland health from a spatiotemporal perspective to enable...

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Autores principales: Hu, Yi, Gou, Xiaowei, Tsunekawa, Atsushi, Cheng, Yunxiang, Hou, Fujiang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9727404/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36507459
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1068941
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author Hu, Yi
Gou, Xiaowei
Tsunekawa, Atsushi
Cheng, Yunxiang
Hou, Fujiang
author_facet Hu, Yi
Gou, Xiaowei
Tsunekawa, Atsushi
Cheng, Yunxiang
Hou, Fujiang
author_sort Hu, Yi
collection PubMed
description Maintaining healthy ecosystems is essential to ensure sustainable socio-economic development. Studies combining remote sensing data with grassland health assessments, extensively performed at different scales, are important for monitoring grassland health from a spatiotemporal perspective to enable scientific grazing management. However, most studies only use quantitative grassland degradation indices, such as grassland cover; this is done despite the fact that some degraded grasslands maintain a high level of cover solely by virtue of the proliferation of toxic weeds. Thus, seeking indices that are a more accurate representation of the health status of grassland vegetation is of utmost importance. Therefore, in order to accurately characterize the ecological integrity of grasslands (i.e., while limiting the impact of confounding variables such as weeds), we chose the grassland health comprehensive evaluation index VOR (vigor, organization, and resilience) to assess the health of grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau. We applied the VOR evaluation indices to two rangelands with different grazing intensity on the Tibetan Plateau, and extracted 11 commonly used vegetation indices based on remote sensing images of rangelands,then modeled them with the data from field surveys. Our results show that the FVC, PS, and VOR were higher in lightly grazed pastures than in heavily grazed pastures in the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons. At the beginning of the sampling period, Poaceae accounted for a greater proportion in the HG pasture. However, by August 2018, the proportion of Poaceae in the LG pasture exceeded that in the HG pasture. the proportion of Forbs in the HG pasture was significantly greater than that in the LG pasture. This indicates that vegetation response to grazing disturbance is not only a volume reduction but also a vegetation composition change. The ratio vegetation index was the most sensitive to the vegetation health response, enabling the quantification and prediction of regional vegetation health and objectively reflecting the actual condition of the grassland ecosystem. According to a multiple regression analysis, the main climatic limiting factor in the region is precipitation, which positively correlated with VOR; whereas, grazing disturbance is an important driving factor, and it is inversely correlated with VOR.
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spelling pubmed-97274042022-12-08 Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance Hu, Yi Gou, Xiaowei Tsunekawa, Atsushi Cheng, Yunxiang Hou, Fujiang Front Plant Sci Plant Science Maintaining healthy ecosystems is essential to ensure sustainable socio-economic development. Studies combining remote sensing data with grassland health assessments, extensively performed at different scales, are important for monitoring grassland health from a spatiotemporal perspective to enable scientific grazing management. However, most studies only use quantitative grassland degradation indices, such as grassland cover; this is done despite the fact that some degraded grasslands maintain a high level of cover solely by virtue of the proliferation of toxic weeds. Thus, seeking indices that are a more accurate representation of the health status of grassland vegetation is of utmost importance. Therefore, in order to accurately characterize the ecological integrity of grasslands (i.e., while limiting the impact of confounding variables such as weeds), we chose the grassland health comprehensive evaluation index VOR (vigor, organization, and resilience) to assess the health of grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau. We applied the VOR evaluation indices to two rangelands with different grazing intensity on the Tibetan Plateau, and extracted 11 commonly used vegetation indices based on remote sensing images of rangelands,then modeled them with the data from field surveys. Our results show that the FVC, PS, and VOR were higher in lightly grazed pastures than in heavily grazed pastures in the 2017 and 2018 growing seasons. At the beginning of the sampling period, Poaceae accounted for a greater proportion in the HG pasture. However, by August 2018, the proportion of Poaceae in the LG pasture exceeded that in the HG pasture. the proportion of Forbs in the HG pasture was significantly greater than that in the LG pasture. This indicates that vegetation response to grazing disturbance is not only a volume reduction but also a vegetation composition change. The ratio vegetation index was the most sensitive to the vegetation health response, enabling the quantification and prediction of regional vegetation health and objectively reflecting the actual condition of the grassland ecosystem. According to a multiple regression analysis, the main climatic limiting factor in the region is precipitation, which positively correlated with VOR; whereas, grazing disturbance is an important driving factor, and it is inversely correlated with VOR. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9727404/ /pubmed/36507459 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1068941 Text en Copyright © 2022 Hu, Gou, Tsunekawa, Cheng and Hou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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) and the copyright owner(s) 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.
spellingShingle Plant Science
Hu, Yi
Gou, Xiaowei
Tsunekawa, Atsushi
Cheng, Yunxiang
Hou, Fujiang
Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title_full Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title_fullStr Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title_full_unstemmed Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title_short Assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
title_sort assessment of the vegetation sensitivity index in alpine meadows with a high coverage and toxic weed invasion under grazing disturbance
topic Plant Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9727404/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36507459
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1068941
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