State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Soil Health and Green Remediation, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430072, China.
State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Soil Health and Green Remediation, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430072, China; CAS Center for Excellence in Quaternary Science and Global Change, Xi'an 710061, China.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Jun 15;288:112395. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112395. Epub 2021 Mar 22.
Soil erosion on cropland is a result of the interaction between nature and human activities. The socioeconomic influencing factors of soil erosion have been less studied than the biophysical processes and previous studies have mainly focused on the impacts of local socioeconomic factors on soil erosion in the same region. However, since agricultural activities are densely connected to other socio-economic activities, the need for agricultural products from distant regions could potentially drive local soil erosion accompanying agricultural production. To the best of our knowledge, these telecoupling effects have not been studied. Here, we combined the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and multiregional input-output analysis (MRIO) models to quantify the contribution of China's cross-provincial economic demand to local soil erosion at the provincial, sectoral, and supply chain levels. Our results show that a large amount of soil erosion in the southwest, northeast, and central regions is linked to the economic needs across provinces. Agriculture and food processing are the most important distant driving sectors. The driving effect of household consumption on soil erosion mainly occurs on shorter supply chains, while exports and capital formation drive soil erosion through longer chains. Our results indicate that local soil erosion management must consider the impact of distant agricultural product needs and coordinate food production and supply on a national scale to protect the ecological function of the land.
农田土壤侵蚀是自然和人类活动相互作用的结果。与生物物理过程相比，社会经济因素对土壤侵蚀的影响研究较少，以前的研究主要集中在同一地区的局部社会经济因素对土壤侵蚀的影响。然而，由于农业活动与其他社会经济活动密切相关，对来自遥远地区的农产品的需求可能会导致伴随农业生产而产生的当地土壤侵蚀。据我们所知，这些远距离耦合效应尚未得到研究。在这里，我们结合修正的通用土壤流失方程（RUSLE）和多区域投入产出分析（MRIO）模型，从省级、部门和供应链层面量化了中国跨省份经济需求对当地土壤侵蚀的贡献。研究结果表明，西南部、东北部和中部地区大量的土壤侵蚀与跨省份的经济需求有关。农业和食品加工业是最重要的远距离驱动部门。家庭消费对土壤侵蚀的驱动作用主要发生在较短的供应链上，而出口和资本形成则通过较长的供应链驱动土壤侵蚀。研究结果表明，当地的土壤侵蚀管理必须考虑到遥远的农产品需求的影响，并在全国范围内协调粮食生产和供应，以保护土地的生态功能。
