Yellow River Engineering Consulting Co., Ltd., Zhengzhou, Henan, 450003, China.
Key Laboratory of Water Management and Water Security for Yellow River Basin, Ministry of Water Resources (under construction), Zhengzhou, Henan, 450003, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Mar;29(12):17049-17061. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-16757-3. Epub 2021 Oct 16.
To prevent desertification, countries worldwide have made diversified efforts, and vegetation restoration has been demonstrated to be an effective approach. However, in regard to sandy land with limited water resources, measures such as revegetation may lead to an increased drought risk. Despite confirmed sand utilization achievements, many controversies remain regarding the advantages of desert greening, especially considering water scarcity. Therefore, the long-run and causal relationships between sandy land, water consumption, and vegetation coverage are necessarily explored. Choosing the southern margin of the Mu Us Sandy Land as the study area, this study explored the interactions between sandy land, water consumption, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of 2000-2018 with the vector autoregression (VAR) model approach. In the study area, various revegetation projects have been implemented, resulting in a notable reduction in the sandy land area. In addition, the NDVI increased from 0.196 in 2000 to 0.371 in 2018, an increase of 89.3%. The results indicated that there exist long-term stable equilibrium and causal relationships existed between water consumption and sandy land and NDVI. NDVI enhancement is relatively the direct factor that causes the increase of water consumption. It could be inferred that the implemented revegetation measures may rely on a large water consumption amount, which may further aggravate water shortages and ecological damage issues. More scientific and stronger effective water resource management measures should be locally implemented to achieve a balance between water resources and revegetation.
为了防止沙漠化，世界各国都做出了多样化的努力，植被恢复已被证明是一种有效的方法。然而，对于水资源有限的沙地，植被恢复等措施可能会增加干旱风险。尽管已经证实了沙漠利用的成果，但沙漠绿化的优势仍存在许多争议，特别是考虑到水资源短缺的情况下。因此，有必要探讨沙地、耗水量和植被覆盖之间的长期和因果关系。本研究选择毛乌素沙地南缘作为研究区，采用向量自回归（VAR）模型方法，探讨了 2000-2018 年沙地、耗水量与归一化差异植被指数（NDVI）之间的相互作用。在研究区实施了各种植被恢复项目，导致沙地面积显著减少。此外，NDVI 从 2000 年的 0.196 增加到 2018 年的 0.371，增加了 89.3%。结果表明，耗水量与沙地和 NDVI 之间存在长期稳定的均衡和因果关系。NDVI 的增强是导致耗水量增加的直接因素。可以推断，实施的植被恢复措施可能依赖于大量的耗水量，这可能进一步加剧水资源短缺和生态破坏问题。应该在当地实施更科学和更强有力的有效水资源管理措施，以实现水资源和植被恢复之间的平衡。
