Constraint effects of ecosystem health changes on wind erosion prevention service on the Tibetan Plateau

The growing challenge of soil wind erosion in drylands is linked with the changes of ecosystem health, which is crucial for sustaining multiple ecosystem services including soil wind erosion prevention (WEP). However, the constraint effects of ecosystem health changes on WEP service remains poorly understood. In this study, the constraint line method and Vigor-Organization-Resilience method were combined to analyze the spatiotemporal variations in the constraint effects of ecosystem health changes on the Tibetan Plateau, which is prone to soil loss by wind erosion. The results showed that 61 % of the plateau area was characterized with an increased level of ecosystem health index (EHI) during 2000-2020, and 34 % of the plateau area benefited from increased WEP service. Spatial analysis revealed high scores of ecosystem health in the southeastern regions and high provision of WEP service in the central regions. The unimodal changes of WEP with increased EHI revealed a nonlinear impacts of ecosystem health which was most conducive to the provision of WEP service at a threshold value of 0.4. Different trends of WEP service were found along the gradients of various health indicators, with a unimodal variation observed under the constraints of vigor, but bimodal and exponential variations observed under respective constraints of organization and resilience. This study highlights the importance of incorporating the nonlinear variations in the constraint effects of ecosystem health into policy intervention aiming to prevent wind erosion by identifying the constraining efficiency of limiting factors in time.