Pollen data from 30 sites in arid and semi-arid regions of China were reviewed to document regional patterns of Holocene vegetation and climate change and to understand the large-scale controls on these changes. Vegetation at most sites in eastern Inner Mongolia switched between forest, forest steppe, and typical steppe, showing maximum moisture conditions before 6 ka (1 ka 1⁄4 1000 cal yr BP) ...

Modern pollen records have been used to successfully distinguish between specific prairie types in North America. Whether the pollen records can be used to detect the occurrence of Eurasian steppe, or even to further delimit various steppe types was until now unclear. Here we characterized modern pollen assemblages of meadow steppe, typical steppe and desert steppe from eastern Eurasia along an...

In recent years, steppe degradation in North China has become a serious environmental problem. Most research on steppe degradation is conducted at the level of communities or at the scale of small regions. To better understand the spatio-temporal variation and driving factors of grassland degradation, monitoring and analysis at broad regional scales are needed. This paper systematically describ...

Vegetation phenology in temperate grasslands is highly sensitive to climate change. However, it is still unclear how the timing of vegetation phenology events (especially for autumn phenology) is altered in response to climate change across different grassland types. In this study, we investigated variations of the growing season start (SOS) and end (EOS), derived from Moderate Resolution Imagi...

An increasing amount of grasslands in Inner Mongolia of Northern China has been converted to cropland. The conversions in this extensive semiarid region have produced adverse ecological consequences at local and regional scales (e.g., dust storms). An important research need is to understand the fundamental ecosystem processes, such as energy and material fluxes, associated with the land conver...

Steppe degradation is a major ecological and economic problem in the Inner Mongolia steppe region, China because it reduces grassland productivity and leads to desertification. The objective of this study was to assess the spatial extent and severity of steppe degradation in the Xilin River Basin, Inner Mongolia using a landscape-scale approach. Our approach combined information from field surv...

A risk assessment of vegetation zone responses to climate change was conducted using the classical Holdridge life zone model on the Loess Plateau of Northwest China. The results show that there are currently ten vegetation zones occurring on the Loess Plateau (1950–2000), including alvar desert, alpine wet tundra, alpine rain tundra, boreal moist forest, boreal wet forest, cool temperate desert...

Prescribed fire in rangeland ecosystems is applied for a variety of management objectives, including enhancing productivity of forage species for domestic livestock. In the big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) steppe of the western United States, fire has been a natural and prescribed disturbance, temporarily shifting vegetation from shrub–grass codominance to grass dominance. There is li...

Alpine steppe is considered to be the largest grassland type on the Tibetan Plateau. This grassland contributes to the global carbon cycle and is sensitive to climate changes. The allocation of biomass in an ecosystem affects plant growth and the overall functioning of the ecosystem. However, the mechanism by which plant biomass is allocated on the alpine steppe remains unclear. In this study, ...

The potential of grazing lands to sequester carbon must be understood to develop effective soil conservation measures and sustain livestock production. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of grazing on soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), microbial biomass carbon (MBC) in Typical steppe and Desert steppe ecosystems, which are both important grassland resources for animal grazin...