Effects of land-use change on grassland ecosystem services in Inner Mongolia and their implications for livelihoods and sustainable management

Grassland degradation has become a major challenge in many parts of the world, especially in arid or semi-arid areas, such as the Chinese Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR). Previous studies of the grassland ecosystems in IMAR focused on climate change and its environmental consequences or on the land-use conflicts between agrarian communities and nomads. For better planning and management, a more integrated analysis of the consequences of land-use change for the livelihood dependence and other benefits (services) of the grasslands in IMAR is needed. Studies on ecosystem services of IMAR’s grasslands are usually based on remote sensing data (TM images) to assess the total value of the grassland ecosystem services using benefit transfer. Thus far, to my knowledge no study collected original data on the detailed use of ecosystem services by pastoralists on the Mongolian Plateau or on their livelihood dependence on these services at the household level. Also, no data is available on the changes over time in contrasting situations for different grassland types (like meadow, steppe and desert steppe). I therefore aim to analyse the interactions between the people and the ecosystems in IMAR in an integrated manner, and especially focus on analysing the different utilization patterns of ecosystem services and the livelihood dependence of local herders and other stakeholders in selected study sites. The ultimate goal of my study is to contribute to sustainable management of the IMAR’s ecosystems. To achieve the goal of my PhD study, the changes in land use, household consumption patterns and their impacts have been addressed and investigated for four selected study sites: Hulun Buir, Xilin Gol, Ordos and Alxa Right. These sites are in a ‘transect’ from southwest to northeast to capture the gradient in use of ecosystem services in IMAR. The methodological framework of this research combines quantitative and qualitative tools to analyse ecosystem services. It specifies an integrative approach in specific spatial and temporal contexts to evaluate trade-offs between human activities, use of ecosystem services and human well-being. This framework enables to analyse the effects of multiple factors (e.g. policies or climate and geographic conditions) on utilization patterns of ecosystem services and the influence on society. The data used to apply the framework stems from a bottom-up approach by using household surveys and other local field data. The results show that the householders’ intake comprised a low amount of crops, including staple foods, vegetables and fruit with a high amount of meat. However, more crops and less meat are increasingly preferred now. From 1995 to 2010, fuel consumption patterns changed from bio-fuels (especially dung) to mainly electricity and gas. Beside the influences of different environmental conditions and economic development, the grassland restoration policy measures changed grazing activities and basic household consumption patterns. Grazing activities were less affected by seasonal grazing and rotational grazing measures than other policy measures. However, when grazing was prohibited, immigration and livestock rearing control policy measures (e.g. in Xilin Gol and Ordos) fundamentally changed the basic household consumption patterns (especially for food and fuel). Livelihood’s food-consumption highly links to potential water consumption. The results show that compared to the direct water consumption, the indirect water consumption through food production was a major share of total water consumption. From 1995 to 2010, indirect water consumption decreased in Xilin Gol and Ordos because meat consumption decreased and fruit and vegetable consumption increased. The grassland ecosystem degradation in IMAR leads to a shortage of meat production and this causes people to purchase food from outside, but the ability to purchase food also depends on income levels. The implementation of the grassland conservation policies significantly affected household livelihoods and this in turn, affected household use of natural assets (primarily the land), their agricultural assets (farming and grazing activities) and their financial assets (income and consumption). The households developed adaptation measures to account for the dependence of their livelihoods on local ecosystems by initializing strategies (e.g. seeking off-farm work, leasing pasture land, increasing purchases of fodder for stall-fed animals and altering their diet and fuel consumption) to compensate for their changing livelihoods. In general, the household dependence on local grasslands decreased. This indicates a transition from traditional pastoral grazing to control grazing, rising of modern dairy cattle (intensive animal husbandry), diversification of income sources and decreases in land-based employment and in the household food and fuel consumption. These changes increased the diversity of livelihoods, household resilience and environmental sustainability. Five grassland utilization patterns were identified, including no use (natural grasslands), light use, moderate use, intensive use and recovery sites (degraded sites protected from further use). The results show that light use generally provided higher levels of ecosystem services than intensive use and no use. Only supporting ecosystem services differed. Surprisingly, I found no consistently positive effects of the strict conservation activities across the sites, since the results varied spatially and with respect to differences in the land-use patterns. My results suggest that appropriate grassland-utilization patterns likely enhance the supply of ecosystem services and reduce negative effects on both household livelihoods and the environment. For example, in the Hulun Buir grasslands, the precipitation is 50% higher than in the other areas. Therefore the area tolerates a higher grazing intensity before degradation occurs and its grasslands provide more provisioning services but at the cost of decreased regulating and supporting services. After implementing grassland conservation policies, income from cultivation and animal grazing decreased, whereas income from compensation and off-farm activities increased. The herders preferred an annual payment of 99.2 US$ha-1 for participating in conservation activities, but the government prefers to provide only 83.8 US$ ha-1, resulting in an annual gap of 15.4 US$ ha-1. These currently too low payments probably lead some herders to expand their grazing into restricted grasslands or increase their number of animals, particularly if such payment program ends. To create an improved and sustainable payment scheme, solutions are needed that enable the herders to sustain their livelihood, while conserving the grasslands. My findings can help to establish appropriate grassland-utilization patterns and more effective payment schemes for the grasslands of IMAR and similar regions.</p

Changing Food Consumption Patterns and Impact on Water Resources in the Fragile Grassland of Northern China

A burgeoning population, pressing development needs and increasing household consumption are rapidly accelerating water use in direct and indirect ways. Increasingly, regions around the world face growing pressure on sustainable use of their water resources especially in arid and semi-arid regions, such as Northern China. The aim of this research is to obtain an overview of the cumulative water requirement for direct (domestic) water use and indirect water use for the basic food consumption of the households in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), in order to reduce the pressure on grassland of Western China by encouraging sustainable water consumption. For indirect water use, we use VWC (virtual water content) analysis theory to analyze the total consumption package of 15 basic food types that were identified and quantified based on the household survey in 2011. In this survey, domestic water consumption data and food consumption data were collected from 209 representative households with spatial variation across three sub-regions (including meadow steppe in Hulun Buir, typical steppe in Xilin Gol, and semi-desert steppe in Ordos) and temporal variation from 1995 to 2010. The results show that the total amounts of food consumption per capita in three sub-regions all show an increasing trend, especially in Hulun Buir and Ordos. Compared to the direct water consumption, the indirect water consumption behind food production made up a major portion of total water consumption, which is affected (1) geographic locations (grassland types); (2) economic development levels and (3) grassland use policy measures. From 1995 to 2010, indirect water consumption displays a decreasing trend in Xilin Gol and Ordos due to the decrease of meat consumption and increase of fruit and vegetable consumption. When considering the amount of land per household, the grassland in Ordos still faces the great threat of high water consumption pressure. Such water consumption may affect water conservation services and productivity of grassland. Therefore, changing diet behavior and reducing the population can be considered options for sustainable use of water

Effects of Government Grassland Conservation Policy on Household Livelihoods and Dependence on Local Grasslands: Evidence from Inner Mongolia, China

Grassland degradation intensifies human-environment conflicts and adversely affects local residents’ livelihoods. To reduce grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia, China, the government has enforced (since 1998) a series of grassland conservation and management policies that restrict the use of grasslands. To ease the impact on the residents’ livelihoods, the national and regional governments have offered a series of top-down arrangements to stimulate sustainable use of the grasslands. Simultaneously, local households spontaneously developed bottom-up countermeasures. To determine the effects of these processes, we interviewed members of 135 households using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. We analyzed the effects on household dependence on local grasslands and on perceptions of the future of grassland use. Our findings show that the implementation of the grassland conservation policies significantly affected household livelihoods, which in turn affected household use of natural assets (primarily the land), their agricultural assets (farming and grazing activities) and their financial assets (income and consumption), resulting in fundamental transformation of their lifestyles. The households developed adaptation measures to account for the dependence of their livelihood on local ecosystems by initializing strategies, such as seeking off-farm work, leasing pasture land, increasing purchases of fodder for stall-fed animals and altering their diet and fuel consumption to compensate for their changing livelihoods

Ecological Footprint Analysis Based on Changing Food Consumption in a Poorly Developed Area of China

The per capita ecological footprint (EF) is a useful tool to compare consumption with nature's ability to support this consumption. Guyuan is an economically impoverished region in China, where EF provides important insights into whether human consumption can be sustained by the local per capita biological capacity (BC), which represents the environment’s ability to support resource use. We estimated the EF of food consumption using local equivalence and yield factors, and compared EF in 1998 and 2013 with BC, which represented the existing biologically productive area (including cultivated land, grassland, forest, and water bodies) that supports this consumption. Data were collected from household surveys, government statistics, and land use maps. We found that food consumption changed, with decreasing consumption of staple foods and increasing consumption of meat, eggs, milk, edible oils, fruit, and vegetables. Decreased staple food consumption decreased the EF for this food group, but the large increase in meat consumption greatly increased EF from meat production (to more than 41 times the 1998 value). Cultivated land contributed greatly to both EF and BC, and staple foods and vegetables were the main EF components for this land. Overall, EF from food consumption decreased from 1998 to 2013, but local BC remained 188,356 ha below EF (i.e., current consumption is not sustainable based on local resources). The Grain for Green program, which focuses on increasing the BC of forest and grassland by replacing degraded cultivated land with these land use types, decreased the BC of cultivated land, leading to wide spatial variation in both EF and BC. These results will inform policy development by revealing the condition of each region’s use of the locally available production resources

Effects of Government Grassland Conservation Policy on Household Livelihoods and Dependence on Local Grasslands: Evidence from Inner Mongolia, China

Grassland degradation intensifies human-environment conflicts and adversely affects local residents’ livelihoods. To reduce grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia, China, the government has enforced (since 1998) a series of grassland conservation and management policies that restrict the use of grasslands. To ease the impact on the residents’ livelihoods, the national and regional governments have offered a series of top-down arrangements to stimulate sustainable use of the grasslands. Simultaneously, local households spontaneously developed bottom-up countermeasures. To determine the effects of these processes, we interviewed members of 135 households using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. We analyzed the effects on household dependence on local grasslands and on perceptions of the future of grassland use. Our findings show that the implementation of the grassland conservation policies significantly affected household livelihoods, which in turn affected household use of natural assets (primarily the land), their agricultural assets (farming and grazing activities) and their financial assets (income and consumption), resulting in fundamental transformation of their lifestyles. The households developed adaptation measures to account for the dependence of their livelihood on local ecosystems by initializing strategies, such as seeking off-farm work, leasing pasture land, increasing purchases of fodder for stall-fed animals and altering their diet and fuel consumption to compensate for their changing livelihoods

Large Group Decision-Making Approach Based on Stochastic MULTIMOORA: An Application of Doctor Evaluation in Healthcare Service

Purpose. This paper presents a new method and model based on stochastic MULTIMOORA method and discuss its application to the doctor evaluation in healthcare service. Design/Methodology/Approach. In the previous studies, the number of decision group is often assumed to be small, and the different dimensions of the evaluation indexes were also less. In this paper, the authors study how to evaluate the healthcare service quality of doctors by the large group. Based on the stochastic MULTIMOORA theory, the authors use the method that builds the function of the net probability, the distance between the ideal solutions, and the utility of each doctor. Findings. This paper presents a novel model to determine the optimal doctor that considers both two dimensions in the index system and balances the evaluation results of the two dimensions. The authors designed the questionnaire and conducted field survey to make the proposed method closer to the actual situation in China. Then, they determined the optimal evaluation result for the healthcare service quality of doctors. Research Limitations/Implications. In the process of practical decision-making, there are differences in intellectual literacy level, regional background, and language preference between different decision-makers. it is impossible for the method we proposed to consider the differentiation index system of decision-makers’ preference comprehensively. And this will be a further research direction. Practical Implications. The authors proposed two evaluation index dimensions and tryed to balance the evaluation results of the two dimensions as much as possible. Meanwhile, the information aggregation method based on stochastic MULTIMOORA is distinguished. Social Implications. The proposed method can be applied to the evaluation of doctors in actual healthcare service. It is helpful to improve the healthcare service quality and the hospital management level, further improve the core competition of hospitals Originality/Value. This paper makes up for the lack of existing studies of the large group evaluation decision in the healthcare service. A new method on the evaluation of doctors by the large group is established and applied to a healthcare management decision-making problem with Chinese characteristics in reality

Effects of Government Grassland Conservation Policy on Household Livelihoods and Dependence on Local Grasslands: Evidence from Inner Mongolia, China

Grassland degradation intensifies human-environment conflicts and adversely affects local residents’ livelihoods. To reduce grassland degradation in Inner Mongolia, China, the government has enforced (since 1998) a series of grassland conservation and management policies that restrict the use of grasslands. To ease the impact on the residents’ livelihoods, the national and regional governments have offered a series of top-down arrangements to stimulate sustainable use of the grasslands. Simultaneously, local households spontaneously developed bottom-up countermeasures. To determine the effects of these processes, we interviewed members of 135 households using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. We analyzed the effects on household dependence on local grasslands and on perceptions of the future of grassland use. Our findings show that the implementation of the grassland conservation policies significantly affected household livelihoods, which in turn affected household use of natural assets (primarily the land), their agricultural assets (farming and grazing activities) and their financial assets (income and consumption), resulting in fundamental transformation of their lifestyles. The households developed adaptation measures to account for the dependence of their livelihood on local ecosystems by initializing strategies, such as seeking off-farm work, leasing pasture land, increasing purchases of fodder for stall-fed animals and altering their diet and fuel consumption to compensate for their changing livelihoods

Comparison of ecosystem services provided by grasslands with different utilization patterns in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Although several previous studies in Inner Mongolia examined the effects of ecological conservation on the delivery of ecosystem services, they were often limited in scope (few ecosystem services were assessed) and often suffered from confounding by spatial variation. In this study, we examined the impact of conservation measures (changes in grassland utilization patterns) on the provision of selected ecosystem services in three types of grasslands (meadow steppe in Hulun Buir, typical steppe in Xilin Gol, and semi-desert steppe in Ordos) in Inner Mongolia. We examined five utilization patterns: no use (natural grasslands), light use, moderate use, intensive use, and recovery sites (degraded sites protected from further use). Through household surveys and vegetation and soil surveys, we measured the differences in ecosystem services among the different grassland utilization patterns. We also identified spatial factors that confounded the quantification of ecosystem services in different types of grasslands. We found that light use generally provided high levels of ecosystem services in meadow steppe and typical steppe, with the main differences in the supporting ecosystem services. Surprisingly, we found no consistently positive impacts of strict conservation activities across the sites, since the results varied spatially and with respect to differences in the land-use patterns. Our study suggests that appropriate grassland utilization patterns can enhance the supply of ecosystem services and reduce negative effects on both household livelihoods and the environment.</p