Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Center

The alpine meadows on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau function as critical reservoirs for regional water resources, yet face severe degradation driven by climate warming and overgrazing. Although establishing Poa pratensis artificial grasslands is a common restoration strategy, their effectiveness in recovering hydrological functions along restoration chronosequence remains poorly quantified. This study evaluated the changes in water conservation capacity and its drivers across a degradation–restoration sequence in the Qilian Mountains comprising alpine meadow (AM), degraded meadow (DM), and 2-, 3-, and 13-year artificial grasslands (AG2, AG3, AG13). Vegetation characteristics, soil structural properties, and water-holding indices were measured to assess restoration outcomes. The results showed that compared to AM, water-holding capacity at 0–30 cm in DM declined by 75.3–85.8%, primarily due to fragmentation of the mattic epipedon and deterioration of soil aggregates. While artificial restoration improved vegetation traits and some soil properties, hydrological recovery exhibited a distinct lag. Specifically, soil water-holding capacity in artificial grasslands showed no statistically significant improvement compared to DM. Even in AG13, soil water storage remained significantly lower than that in AM. Mantel tests and regression analyses identified root mass density and mean weight diameter as the primary drivers governing water conservation capacity. These findings reveal that artificial grasslands cannot serve as functional hydrological reservoirs in a timely manner, highlighting the importance of conserving intact alpine ecosystems.

With the escalating demand for forest-derived ecological products, quantifying forest ecological product production capacity (EPC) has become essential for precise ecological governance. Addressing the methodological gaps and complexity in current assessments, this study develops a transferable Forest EPC theoretical framework integrated across four dimensions: environmental background, vegetation status, human pressure, and human investment. Using Henan Province as a case study, we established a multi-criteria evaluation model to characterize the spatial drivers and supply potential of Forest EPC. Our findings reveal that the provincial forest EPC stands at a moderate level (0.341). The spatial distribution is highly heterogeneous: the “medium” EPC grade dominates the landscape (36.69%), whereas “high-level” areas are critically scarce (3.76%). Notably, forest EPC exhibits a strong spatial gradient, with high-performance clusters in the southern and western highlands contrasting with lower values in the northern plains. The identification of significant spatial autocorrelation (Global Moran’s I = 0.71) highlights the necessity of regional collaborative management. This study provides a methodological reference that is adaptable to diverse regional contexts through the recalibration of local indicators and weights, offering a scientific benchmark for optimizing the spatial layout of ecological product supply.

• Elevation has a negative effect on bacterial diversity. • The regulation of bacterial communities by altitude is essentially climate-driven. • Bacterial diversity enhances the multifunctionality in montane ecosystems. • Climate is the main driving factor in multifunctionality. As a natural variable, the elevation gradient integrates the influences of various environmental factors, these factors and their interactions significantly affect the spatial distribution pattern of soil microorganisms. Global-scale evidence on how elevation regulates bacterial diversity and its subsequent influence on soil multifunctionality remains limited. Here, we collated observational data from 458 global bacterial community along elevation gradients and conducted a meta -analysis to explore the response of bacterial diversity to elevation and the relationships between bacterial diversity and soil multifunctionality. The results demonstrated that bacterial diversity significantly declines with increasing elevation. Climate factors, elevation, total nitrogen (TN), and soil pH had a significant negative impact on the effect size, but soil organic carbon (SOC), available phosphorus (AP), and latitude significantly positive effects, indicating that the regulation of bacterial communities by altitude is primarily climate-driven. Furthermore, bacterial diversity was found to significantly enhance soil multifunctionality in montane ecosystems, with climate emerging as the dominant driver of multifunctionality. Overall, our findings highlight the elevational decline in bacterial diversity and its positive contribution to ecosystem multifunctionality. These insights deepen our understanding of how microbial diversity mediates ecological processes across environmental gradients and provide critical perspectives for predicting ecosystem responses to global climate change.