Author details

### Duanyang Xu

and the Natural Forest Protection, the coverage of vegetation was increased, and some areas showed obvious desertification reversion [43], which made it possible to increase the ESV. In the same period, intensive human activities, such as coal mining, oil and gas drilling, road, subway, and pipeline laying, had promoted the economic development in rural areas and pastoral areas as well as destroy the vegetation in ecologically fragile regions with abundant resources; land desertification problem was more prominent [44], resulting in ESV loss. All factors mentioned above made the impact of desertification dynamics on regional ESV, which

The further investigation based on the sensitive analysis results showed that the desertification reversion in erdos and alsh had play a promoting role in the increment of regional ESV, which was mainly attributed to the ecological projects and policies implementation and ecologybased industry development. Taking alsh as an example, by developing the farming of Haloxylon-Cistanche, two genera of useful plants, the yield of Cistanche increased from 200 to 800–1000 tons per year in Inner Mongolia, which not only increased the income of farmers but also achieved the goal of combating desertification [45]. However, the ESV in nmhs and horq showed a significant decreasing trend, especially for horq, whose sensitive coefficient reached 74.53, and these regions should be the focus of desertification control in the future. For the ESV decrement areas which are less sensitive such as hlbr, more attention should be paid to protect and prevent damage. To avoid the reduction of forest and undegraded grassland area and quality decline, different measures, such as soil and water management and rational exploitation, improve the quality of population, and delineation of "ecological red line," should be

The impact of desertification dynamics on regional ecosystem services was carried out by monetizing the value of different ecosystems, including deserts and desertified land. According to the equal interval principle, five desertification grades were divided. The low and medium desertified areas might overlap the grassland with a certain degree of desertification. Thus, compared with other research results [46, 47], the area and ESV of deserts and desertified land were higher, and the area and ESV of undegraded grassland were lower. However, the land classifications in this study could be used to objectively analyze the impact of different processes of desertification on regional ecosystem service change. In the future, data of climate change and human activities would be involved to quantify the mechanisms of the impact of desertification dynamics. Besides, the linkage of ecosystem service change and sustainable livelihoods of rural community should be further investigated, and the specific measures and policies for how to enhance the adaptive ability and resilience of rural community should be studied in the future.

From 1981 to 2010, the desertification dynamics in Inner Mongolia were obvious. The area of

uted in erdos, alsh, and other sand areas in the southwest. The area of the lands experiencing

, which was mainly distrib-

, and these lands were mainly located in hsdk and

the lands that experienced desertification reversion was 170,900 km2

desertification expansion was 204,300 km<sup>2</sup>

showed a great spatial heterogeneity.

22 Community and Global Ecology of Deserts

implemented to ensure the regional ecological security.

5. Conclusion

Address all correspondence to: xudy@igsnrr.ac.cn

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
