The Evolution of a Karst Rocky Desertification Land Ecosystem and Its Driving Forces in the Houzhaihe Area, China

Understanding the evolution of karst rocky desertification (KRD) quantitatively is essential to obtain objective knowledge about the concept of KRD and the form reason of KRD, and is useful to restore KRD land. Houzhaihe area located in central plateau in Guizhou Province was studied here as a representative assemblage landform and its KRD’ s evolution and driving factors were studied, based mainly on high-resolution remote sensing image in 1963, 1978, 2005 and 2010. The KRD land comprises light KRD, moderate KRD and severe KRD. The results demonstrated that the evolution process of KRD can be divided into four modes such as unchanged, weakened, fluctuated and aggravated in the study area. The KRD with no changes from 1963 to 2010, namely, unchanged mode, accounted for 43.76% of the total area of the KRD in 2010;it distributed in the area with the slope of 15&#176 - 25&#176 and >25&#176 basically. Furthermore, the severe KRD distributed mainly in the areas within 300 - 600 m distance from settlement;when the distance away from the rural settlements was more than 900 m, the severe KRD declined, and its proportion was 28.6% and 10.6% in 1963 and 2010 respectively. In the peak-cluster depressions, located in central study area, the slope cropland with slope of 15&#176 - 25&#176 was still abounding, and was seriously rocky desertification generally. So, we propose that the existence of a large number of slope croplands is still the major driving factor of land rocky desertification. Therefore, for the rocky desertification control, the authors consider that the focal point is to alter the land use of steep-slope cropland at present.

Storage, form, and influencing factors of karst inorganic carbon in a carbonate area in China

Carbonate rock chemical weathering carbon sinks reduce the rate of increase of the atmospheric CO_(2) concentration and global warming. However, uncertainty still exists in the estimation results of carbonate rock chemical weathering carbon sink fluxes(CCSF), and the contributions of climate change and ecological restoration to the CCSF are not clear. To this end, we compiled published site data on ion concentrations in different watersheds in China and used a classical thermodynamic dissolution model to reassess the potential and spatial and temporal patterns of the CCSF in China from 1991 to 2020. We quantified the contributions of temperature(MAT), precipitation(MAP), evapotranspiration(ET), soil water(SM), and the normalized difference vegetation index(NDVI) to the CCSF. The results revealed that(1) China's CCSF was 22.76 t CO_(2)km^(-2)yr^(-1), which was higher than the global average(15.77 t CO_(2)km^(-2)yr^(-1)). The total carbonate rock chemical weathering carbon sink(CCS) was 4772.67×10^(4)t CO_(2), contributing 14.91% of the global CCS through a carbonate rock area of 252.98×10^(4)km^(-2).(2) China's CCSF decreased gradually from southeast to northwest, with values of 33.14, 12.93, and7.27 t CO_(2)km^(-2)yr^(-1)in the southern karst, Qinghai-Tibetan karst, and northern karst regions, respectively.(3) The overall CCSF in China exhibited an increasing trend from 1991 to 2020, with a rate of increase of 0.16 t CO_(2)km^(-2)yr^(-1).(4) The contributions of the MAP, MAT, ET, SM, and NDVI to the CCSF were 63.3%, 3.02%, 27.5%, 3.1%, and 3.05%, respectively. Among them, the increase in precipitation was the main contributor to the increase in the CCSF in China over the last 30 years, while the enhancement of ET offset part of the positive contribution of the increase in precipitation to the CCSF. In conclusion, the results of this study provide a systematic quantification of the magnitude, the patterns, and the influencing factors of CCS over a long time series in China. The results are of great significance and provide a reference for the diagnosis and gap analysis of the national and global carbon neutrality capacities.