Expanding grassland coverage to maintain ecohydrological sustainability in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China

Zhu, Yuzuo; Xu, Xuefeng

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2485-2025

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2485-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Drought, society, and ecosystems (NHESS/BG/GC/HESS inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-22-2485-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

Research article

|

28 May 2025

Research article |

| 28 May 2025

Expanding grassland coverage to maintain ecohydrological sustainability in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China

Yuzuo Zhu and Xuefeng Xu

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Final revised paper (published on 28 May 2025)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Oct 2023)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on egusphere-2023-2287', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Nov 2023
APENC is a fragile region in eco-environment. Water is an important fundmental factor affecting the ecological environment in this region. On this base, land use is another factor that affects the ecological environment. From the aspects of hydroclimatic regime and regional ecological management, the paper studied the appropriate land use/cover pattern, which is of great significance to the ecological restoration of this area. The following comments are for your reference.
The effect of the accuracy of the adopted data on the conclusions should be discussed. Fro example, accuracy of land use data is 0.1°.

Many sentences are very long. It is recommended to shorten them. For example line 45 and line 55.

in line 85. In the form of references.

The study area in this paper is not the whole of APENC. The specific location of the study area in the APENC should be introduced.

The contents of Table 1 can be directly elaborated in paper (delete table 1)

Significance test can be added in Table 5 and Table 6.

in line 241. November is missing.

The conclusion can take the form of paragraphs and should be condensed.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2287-RC1
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Yuzuo Zhu, 05 Feb 2024
  
  We would like to thank you for your constructive and thoughtful comments. We have implemented all of your suggestions which have led to a much improved and complete manuscript. In the following sections, the issues raised by you are addressed in the order.
  
  1. The effect of the accuracy of the adopted data on the conclusions should be discussed. For example, accuracy of land use data is 0.1°.
  
  Response: The land use dataset was produced in previous teamwork (Du et al,). 500 samples were selected to evaluate land use data with field investigation and high-resolution images. The evaluation results show that the overall accuracy of the final classification and KAPPA coefficient are both >0.8, which meets the accuracy requirements. The precision of the land use dataset was trustworthy. This expression is kept consistent in the paper.
  
  The China meteorological forcing dataset and MODIS LST have been widely used including in the study area of previous work (Wang et al, 2020; Li, 2022). Other datasets like GLASS have been evaluated in the papers that produce the data. The uncertainty of soil properties is in the discussion section.
  
  Du, T., Jiao, J., Duan, H., He, H., XUE, X., and Xie, Y.: Study of conversion between land use/landcover classification system of Chinese Academy of Science and IGBP classification system: In the northwest argo-pastoral zone Journal of Lanzhou University: Natural Science (in Chinese), 56, 91-95, https://doi.org/10.13885/j.issn.0455-2059.20120.01.011, 2020
  
  Wang, X., Zhang, B., Xu, X., Tian, J., and He, C.: Regional water-energy cycle response to land use/cover change in the agro-pastoral ecotone, Northwest China, Journal of Hydrology, 580, 124246, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.124246, 2020
  
  Li, F.: Assessment and fusion of the soil moisture data sets based on community land model and smap satellite (in Chinese), M.S. thesis, Lanzhou Univeristy, 16-40 pp., 2021.
  
  2. Many sentences are very long. It is recommended to shorten them. For example line 45 and line 55.
  
  Response: Thank you. I'll polish them.
  
  3. in line 85. In the form of references.
  
  Response: Thank you. I fixed it.
  
  4. The study area in this paper is not the whole of APENC. The specific location of the study area in the APENC should be introduced.
  
  Response: The study area of this paper is the APENC. In our project, the APENC uses two areas for different research purposes according to the descending line and the administrative district, respectively. The two areas are very similar and both are considered research areas for the project.
  
  5. The contents of Table 1 can be directly elaborated in paper (delete table 1)
  
  Response: Thank you. We delete the table and this expression is kept consistent in the paper.
  
  6. Significance test can be added in Table 5 and Table 6.
  
  Response: Thank you. I have added the result of the significant test.
  
  7. in line 241. November is missing.
  
  Response: Thank you. I have corrected the mistake
  
  8. The conclusion can take the form of paragraphs and should be condensed.
  
  Response: Thank you. I will make the conclusion more condensed.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2287-AC1
RC2:
'Comment on egusphere-2023-2287', Inti Lefort, 08 Jan 2024

The subject of the study and the development of the technical-scientific part is consistent and provides important land management data for a large area, using validated land use models. Also, the results are integrated with a Chinese government plan for land use restoration, providing useful information for policy development.
However, there are several things that could be improved; it is a text that in many parts is redundant, for example between L 342 and 346 the same idea is expressed twice without sense, in the same page in L 367 the information presented in table 8 (percentages) is repeated and the SAME information is repeated again in lines 433 and 434. The equations 1,2 y 3 are widely used and it´s not necessary to present them. There is a lot of information (ten tables and fifteen figures!) I suggest reducing this by at least half (ideally less) and leaving some as supplementary material. The results are listed again in the conclusions, it is not necessary to repeat them, also the number 1 (L. 422 and 423) in conclusion Are these study results?. The use of abbreviations is confusing, bareland, cropland, grassland and "BL", "CL", and "GRS" are used indistinctly. It´s not necesary to paste the URL of information in the text body (L. 85 and 86) and it´s repeated in L 340 and 341 redundant, the url should be in the Reference.

The use of water conservation, defined in the water balance Eq 4. (L. 212), implies the use of runoff, it is not explained how this term is approached. In the line 381-382 a part is explained, in the discussion, which should be explained in the methodology
It is necessary a english gramatical review, there are errors in the use of verbs e.g. L 100 "...with and annually averaged temperature..." should be "...with an average annual temperature" or L 346 a verb in the past tense is used to talk about 2035. The use of "Here" repeatedly in the wrong contexts. the use of commas needs also another revision, for example in the title.
Now a list of particular comments on the text:
L. 33 "violently" it´s out of context this adjective

L. 35 The LUCC is a global mitigation and adaptation strategy in a local context. I suggest adding "adaptation"

L. 66 "Therefore" and "in this context" are redundant

L. 77 using an abbreviation such as "W" may not be correct depending on the journal's guidelines.

L. 85-86 the urls should be in the corresponding reference

L. 100-101 the use of averaged instead of average

L. 102 The term vegetation types is used to refer to land use.

F. 1 The "line" of the river cuts the DEM Legend

F. 3 chart number 20 is missing the metrics

L. 221 The use of "severely"?

L. 234 "here" it´s wrong used in that way

F. 7 the legend use "mm" should be C°

F. 9 The legend "Mean value" it´s not necessary

L. 322 "here" it´s wrong used in that way

L 341-342 the urls should be in the corresponding reference

L. 346 use of "was" talking about 2035

L. 348 I dont understand "so five escenarios, which consider computing time, to represent...."

L.349-350 Repeated information with table 8

L 359. It is repeated many times that the climatic forcings will be left static to isolate the impacts of LUCC, it is not necessary to repeat so many times that, saying that the climatic forcings remain static the rest is understood.

L 440. What does it mean that data will be available upon reasonable request? Normally the data is available without conditions

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2287-RC2
- AC2:
  'Reply on RC2', Yuzuo Zhu, 05 Feb 2024
  However, there are several things that could be improved; it is a text that in many parts is redundant, for example between L 342 and 346 the same idea is expressed twice without sense, in the same page in L 367 the information presented in table 8 (percentages) is repeated and the SAME information is repeated again in lines 433 and 434.
  
  Response: Thank you. I will polish all the text.
  
  The equations 1,2 y 3 are widely used and it´s not necessary to present them.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  There is a lot of information (ten tables and fifteen figures!) I suggest reducing this by at least half (ideally less) and leaving some as supplementary material.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  The results are listed again in the conclusions, it is not necessary to repeat them, also the number 1 (L. 422 and 423) in conclusion Are these study results?.
  
  Response: Thank you. I polished it.
  
  The use of abbreviations is confusing, bareland, cropland, grassland and "BL", "CL", and "GRS" are used indistinctly. It´s not necesary to paste the URL of information in the text body (L. 85 and 86) and it´s repeated in L 340 and 341 redundant, the url should be in the Reference.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  The use of water conservation, defined in the water balance Eq 4. (L. 212), implies the use of runoff, it is not explained how this term is approached.
  
  Response: All terms are from the output of the model, including runoff, which was evaluated by section 2.4 and previous work (Deng et al, 2022; Li, 2021; Wang et al, 2019). This expression will be kept consistent in the paper.
  
  Deng, M., Meng, X., Lu, Y., Shu, L., Li, Z., Zhao, L., Chen, H., Shang, L., Sheng, D., and Ao, X.: Impact of climatic and vegetation dynamic change on runoff over the Three Rivers Source Region based on the Community Land Model, Climate Dynamics, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-022-06619-0, 2022.
  
  Li, F. Assessment and fusion of the soil moisture data sets based on community land model and smap satellite (in Chinese), M.S. thesis, Lanzhou Univeristy, 16-40 pp., 2021.
  
  Wang, H., Xiao, W., Zhao, Y., Wang, Y., Hou, B., Zhou, Y., Yang, H., Zhang, X., and Cui, H.: The Spatiotemporal Variability of Evapotranspiration and Its Response to Climate Change and Land Use/Land Cover Change in the Three Gorges Reservoir, Water, 11, 1739, https://doi.org/10.3390/w11091739, 2019.
  
  In the line 381-382 a part is explained, in the discussion, which should be explained in the methodology
  
  Response: Thank you. I delete it here and put this part into methodology.
  
  It is necessary for a english gramatical review, there are errors in the use of verbs e.g. L 100 "...with and annually averaged temperature..." should be "...with an average annual temperature" or L 346 a verb in the past tense is used to talk about 2035. The use of "Here" repeatedly in the wrong contexts. the use of commas needs also another revision, for example in the title.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised all “here” in my paper. I will polish all commas in my paper. But I don’t see commas in my title. Can you tell me where it is again?
  
  Now a list of particular comments on the text:
  
  L. 33 "violently" it´s out of context this adjective
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 35 The LUCC is a global mitigation and adaptation strategy in a local context. I suggest adding "adaptation"
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 66 "Therefore" and "in this context" are redundant
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 77 using an abbreviation such as "W" may not be correct depending on the journal's guidelines.
  
  Response: Thank you. I changed it to Wc.
  
  L. 85-86 the urls should be in the corresponding reference
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 100-101 the use of averaged instead of average
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised all “averaged” in my paper.
  
  L. 102 The term vegetation types is used to refer to land use.
  
  Response: Thank you. I changed it to land use/cover types.
  
  F. 1 The "line" of the river cuts the DEM Legend
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  F. 3 chart number 20 is missing the metrics
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 221 The use of "severely"?
  
  Response: Thank you. I change it to respectively.
  
  L. 234 "here" it´s wrong used in that way
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  F. 7 the legend use "mm" should be C°
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  F. 9 The legend "Mean value" it´s not necessary
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 322 "here" it´s wrong used in that way
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L 341-342 the urls should be in the corresponding reference
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 346 use of "was" talking about 2035
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L. 348 I dont understand "so five escenarios, which consider computing time, to represent...."
  
  Response: We want to propose different scenarios to meet the requirements of the government. This is to say, the grasslands will increase to 60 %, bare land will decrease from 30 %, and croplands will decrease from 13 % during 2015 to 2035. Countless combinations satisfy this requirement. To save computed time, five scenarios were selected to represent the future.
  
  In the paper, we change the expression: To save computed time, five scenarios were selected to represent the future. The percent of grasslands, bare land and croplands were respectively 60 %, 21 % and 13 % in EXP_602113; 60 %, 23 % and 11 % in EXP_602311; 60 %, 25 % and 9 % in EXP_602509; 60 %, 27 % and 7 % in EXP_602707; 60 %, 30 % and 4 % in EXP_603004.
  
  L.349-350 Repeated information with table 8
  
  Response: Thank you. I delete Table 8.
  
  L 359. It is repeated many times that the climatic forcings will be left static to isolate the impacts of LUCC, it is not necessary to repeat so many times that, saying that the climatic forcings remain static the rest is understood.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it.
  
  L 440. What does it mean that data will be available upon reasonable request? Normally the data is available without conditions.
  
  Response: Thank you. I revised it. “The data will be made available on request”.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2023-2287-AC2

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (12 Mar 2024) by Camila Alvarez-Garreton

Dear authors,

Thank you for responding to the feedback from both referees. The referees have given significant comments and suggestions that need to be incorporated into a revised version of the manuscript. Alongside addressing the referees' comments, please take into account the following comments for further review consideration.

A main motivation of this study is to propose land cover mixtures that maintain a sustainable ecohydrological environment (abstract). And the methodological approach is to find an optimal land cover that leads to a cooling surface and higher water conservation. What are the limitations of this approach? Are the temperature and water balance the key variables modulating sustainable ecohydrological environment? What about biodiversity, surface runoff, erosion, etc.? Please discuss about this.

Please provide a deeper explanation to support the scientific novelty of the study. In the introduction, it says: “Previous studies in APNEC mainly focused on assessing changes in warming effects and water conservation (W) due to LUCC, and giving optimization suggestions based on changes in water conservation or delimiting the optimization area based on high W (Wang et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2021a; Zeng and Li, 2019; Jia et al., 2017a)”. Based on the two main objectives of the study (from the introduction), the research gap you are filling with this study is not clear to me.

Revise the Discussion to clarify the main messages of the subsections. E.g., 4.1 Role on what? 4.2 Uncertainties related to soil properties?

I agree with reviewer 2 regarding the need to carefully review the entire text and correct the grammatical errors. The grammatical errors in the current version of the manuscript hinders readability and communication of the scientific message.

Please revise your response to the comment from RC1 about the study area and provide a better definition of the study region. This could be complemented with a zoomed-out visualization of the map. It seems that other papers define the APENC differently? (e.g., Wang et al., 2021). Please clarify.

Fig. 1: I recommend to change the colors since forests and grasslands are too similar.

Wang, X., and Coauthors, 2021: Vegetation Restoration Projects Intensify Intraregional Water Recycling Processes in the Agro-Pastoral Ecotone of Northern China. J. Hydrometeor., 22, 1385–1403, https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-20-0125.1.

Sincerely,
C. Alvarez-Garreton

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (14 Mar 2024) by Anja Rammig (Co-editor-in-chief)

AR by Yuzuo Zhu on behalf of the Authors (02 May 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Jun 2024) by Camila Alvarez-Garreton

Dear authors,

Thank you for responding to the feedback from both referees. The referees have given significant comments and suggestions that need to be incorporated into a revised version of the manuscript for further review consideration. Alongside addressing the referees' comments, please take into account the following comments for further review consideration.

General comment:
The main objective and experimental setup of the study should be better explained in the abstract and introduction sections. For example, what are the experienced negative impacts of the historical land cover changes? And what is you want to mitigate with alternative land cover mixtures?

Regarding the findings, please specify how much of the current land cover should be changed in order to achieve the optimal mixture you are proposing?

The authors make projections for 2035, however, the atmospheric forcing data for the future is not specified in the experimental setup. What are the climatic scenarios you are using to evaluate these projections?

Specific comments:
Abstract:
“large-scale land use/cover change (LUCC)” What do you mean by large-scale?

“Negative environmental effects of excessive re-vegetation have emerged.”
What effects?

“sustainable ecohydrological environment” What is a sustainable ecohydrological environment? Does it mean biodiversity? Water provision? Please specify.

What do you mean by “hydroclimatic impacts” ?

“Our findings suggest the percentages of grasslands, bare land and croplands in the APENWC for 2035 approximately is 60, 23, and 11 %, respectively” It is not clear where these land cover projections come from. Is this your recommendations for an optimal land cover mixture that mitigate the negative impacts? how much of the current land cover should be changed in order to achieve the optimal mixture you are proposing?

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Jun 2024) by Anja Rammig (Co-editor-in-chief)

AR by Yuzuo Zhu on behalf of the Authors (23 Jul 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Aug 2024) by Camila Alvarez-Garreton

RR by Zhenghui Xie (20 Sep 2024)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (22 Oct 2024) by Camila Alvarez-Garreton

Dear authors,

Thank you for providing a revised version of the manuscript. There are still some major concerns regarding the findings and readability of the manuscript. Please see below.

General comment:
Why the optimal scenario was selected based on the minimum delta WC? (Table 2). Would an increase in WC be desirable in terms of sustainability? There are other scenarios that decrease ET while keeping the 60% target in grassland. A scenario of “minimum change” is not necessarily an optimal scenario. It depends on what is the main objective of the restoration project and the reference conditions these variations are computed from.

There are scenarios showing a slight warming (higher LST) and increases in water balance (higher WC), based on the arguments provided in the manuscript (copied below), the scenarios with higher WC should be selected. Please clarify:

“For sustainable ecological construction, it is necessary to pursue an alternative mixture of land use/cover without augmenting warming and endangering water availability. This means the proper mixture of land use/cover has a lower LST and larger WC than in 2015 (Arora and Montenegro, 2011; Bai et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2021d; Findell et al., 2017). Therefore, vegetation restoration strategies in the APENWC should use an appropriate mixture of land use/cover, such as EXP_602311; this indicates that approximately 6.9 % (5348 km2) of bare land and 1.5 % (1163 km2) of croplands transformed into grasslands. The LUCC to EXP_602311 generally caused more cooling and slightly increased the WC owing to proper vegetation restoration. Otherwise, other scenarios would lead to warming or drying, exacerbating drought in the APENWC.”

General writing of the manuscript:

The response letter and revised manuscript have helped to better understand the methodological framework, results and conclusions; however, the English writing still requires an in-depth revision as some ideas are still unclear or misleading.

Below I provide some suggestions for the abstract, as an example. I won't go through the whole manuscript. But this is the kind of grammatical revision the manuscript requires. The complete manuscript should be revised accordingly.

Abstract:
Current text: "The Chinese government has implemented large-scale vegetation restoration projects and plans to expand the percentage of grasslands to 60 %. However, excessive vegetation restoration consumes more moisture and causes soil drying 10 in the agro-pastoral ecotone of Northwest China (APENWC). The optimal mixture of land use/cover in the APENWC incorporated into vegetation restoration strategies to mitigate the drying effects remains unclear."

Suggestion: With the aim of (…), the Chinese government is carrying out large-scale vegetation restoration projects in the agro-pastoral ecotone of Northwest China (APENWC), which cover a region of xx km2. At present (or in 2015?), the main land cover classes in the APENWC are grassland (53%), bare land (29.9 %), cropland (and 12.5 %), and (…) (remaining percentage to get 100%). The restoration projects plan to increase grasslands to 60% by 2035, but it is unclear which combination of the other land cover classes are the most adequate to mitigate the potential drying and warming effects over the region.

Current text: "To fill this gap, the Community Land Model version 5.0 (CLM5.0) with static climatic forcing was used to analyse the spatially averaged impacts of land use/cover change (LUCC) by simulating real LUCC scenarios from 2000 to 2015 and examine the impacts of different types of LUCC by simulating idealised maximised LUCC scenarios."

Suggestion: To fill this gap, the Community Land Model version 5.0 (CLM5.0) was implemented over the historical period 2000-2015 under a real LUCC scenario (reference scenario) and several synthetic LUCC scenarios. The impacts of LUCC on regional water fluxes and temperature were assessed by comparing the spatially averaged annual land surface temperature (LST) and evapotranspiration simulated by the different model setups.

Current text: "The results showed that the two main types of LUCC in the study region from 2000 to 2015 were the conversion from bare land and croplands to grasslands. The bare land to grasslands decreased the annual mean land surface temperature (LST) by -0.17 °C, while croplands to grasslands increased the yearly mean LST by 0.96 °C; evapotranspiration (ET) changes were 53.32 and -184.42 mm yr-1, respectively, leading to an annual spatially averaged LST by a cooling range of -0.06 ±0.15 °C and ET increased by a range of 9.70 ± 19.04 mm yr-1 in the study region. The correlation coefficients between biogeophysical characteristics and change of ET and LST indicated that surface albedo was the most sensitive surface characteristic influencing LST and ET in summer and winter from bare land and croplands to grasslands. In contrast, the leaf and stem area index (LAI + SAI) showed the most significant correlation between croplands and grasslands throughout the year."

Suggestion: The reference scenario showed that there have been two main LUCC in the region, from bare land to grassland and from cropland to grassland, which have totally increased grassland cover from xx% in 2000 to 53% in 2015. The conversion from bare land to grassland reduced LST by 0.17 °C and increased ET by 53.32 mm yr-1. On the other hand, the conversion from cropland to grasslands increased LST by 0.96 °C; and reduced ET by 184.42 mm yr-1. For both LUCC of the reference scenario, the variations in surface albedo during summer and winter were identified as one of the main factors explaining the changes in LST and ET. For the croplands to grasslands case, the leaf and stem area index was also a main explanatory factor throughout the year. Despite of generating significant local impacts, the overall effect of the historical LUCC led to not statistically significant variations in LST (-0.06 ±0.15 °C) and ET (9.70 ± 19.04 mm yr-1) when the complete APENWC region is considered.

Current text: "An analysis of changes in land use/cover patterns from 2000 to 2015 found that some grids experienced drying and warming as vegetation restoration projects, owing to the offsetting effects of the two types of LUCC. Furthermore, to identify the proper land use/cover pattern to mitigate drying, we designed different LUCC scenarios by varying the mixture of land use/cover in the CLM5.0 and compared the criteria (water conservation and LST) from the output. Based on higher water conservation and cooling surface, results show that the optimal percentages of grasslands, bare land, and croplands in the APENWC approximately are 60, 23, and 11 %, respectively, which will mitigate the drying and warming surface environment; this suggests that approximately 5348 km2 of bare land and 1163 km2 of croplands will be transformed into grasslands. These findings provide vital information for maintaining ecohydrological sustainability in the APENWC and similar areas."

Suggestion: The synthetic LUCC scenarios showed that the land cover configuration that minimized the drying and warming effect within the APENWC region, while maintaining the target of 60% of grassland from the government plan, was a 23% of bare land, 11% of cropland and (…) (remaining percentage to get 100%). Such land cover configuration would lead to a xx% increase in ET and a xx% decrease in LST at the regional scale. This suggests that approximately 5348 km2 of bare land and 1163 km2 of croplands should be transformed into grasslands. These findings provide vital information for maintaining ecohydrological sustainability in the APENWC.

Minor comment:
Revise grammatical error: APNEC appears several times. It should be APENWC.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (11 Nov 2024) by Anja Rammig (Co-editor-in-chief)

AR by Yuzuo Zhu on behalf of the Authors (30 Dec 2024) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (20 Jan 2025) by Camila Alvarez-Garreton

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (14 Feb 2025) by Anja Rammig (Co-editor-in-chief)

AR by Yuzuo Zhu on behalf of the Authors (21 Feb 2025) Manuscript

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Short summary

China's vegetation restoration projects plan to expand grassland coverage to 60 %. Excessive vegetation restoration undermined soil drying in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China (APENWC). The potential impacts of future land use and cover change (LUCC) are unclear. Future scenarios with varying proportions of cropland and bare land indicate that increasing grassland coverage to 60 % by 2035 supports ecohydrological sustainability without introducing drying.

Expanding grassland coverage to maintain ecohydrological sustainability in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China

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