Abstract China has 6.6 million km2 of drylands that support approximately 580 million
people. These drylands are at risk of desertification. In this Review, the changes observed in …

Desertification in karst is an effect of climate change and not sustainable anthropogenic
activities, the combination of which, however, causes the gradual loss of karst natural …

Vegetation greening has been suggested to be a dominant trend over recent decades, but
severe pulses of tree mortality in forests after droughts and heatwaves have also been …

China has experienced unprecedented urbanization and associated rural depopulation
during recent decades alongside a massive increase in the total population. By using …

Excessive emissions of greenhouse gases—of which carbon dioxide is the most significant
component, are regarded as the primary reason for increased concentration of atmospheric …

Plant communities strongly influence soil microbial communities and, in turn, soil carbon (C)
cycling. Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is an important parameter for predicting soil C …

Drylands cover 41% of the earth's land surface and include 45% of the world's agricultural
land. These regions are among the most vulnerable ecosystems to anthropogenic climate …

China has increased its vegetation coverage and enhanced its terrestrial carbon sink
through ecological restoration since the end of the 20th century. However, the temporal …

Satellite data show increasing leaf area of vegetation due to direct factors (human land-use
management) and indirect factors (such as climate change, CO2 fertilization, nitrogen …

Industrialization and urbanization have resulted in a series of problems such as an
excessive intensity of land utilization and an unbalanced structure of land use …