IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v150y2025ics0264837724004150.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying suitable areas for cropland and urban development in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Lijing
  • Zhang, Lu
  • Xiao, Yi
  • Kong, Lingqiao
  • Ouyang, Zhiyun

Abstract

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is a rapidly urbanizing region home to 36 million people. However, it is also a hotspot for biodiversity conservation and a key provider of ecosystem services for Asia. Therefore, there is notable conflict between the needs for ecosystem protection and land development for food production and urbanization as the region’s population continues to grow and urban areas develop further. To resolve this conflict, ecosystem protection indicators, including protected area, ecological degradation, and the importance of ecosystem services, must be intertwined with cropland and urban land development. We identified suitable areas for cropland and urban within the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and then evaluated the potential impacts under four scenarios: ecological protection priority, balanced consideration, development area priority, and conventional scenario. Under the ecological protection priority scenario, the total suitable areas for cropland and urban are 16507.76 km2 and 3339.61 km2, respectively, and their total area accounted for 0.69 % in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In addition, the loss of key ecosystem services is less than 3.33 % under the scenario, which is the smallest loss among all scenarios. Correspondingly, the grain yield and the gross regional product are expected to increase by 30.15 % and 88.88 %, respectively. This is especially notable as ecosystem services decreased by 8.01 %–16.30 % under the conventional scenario. Therefore, we recommend land development under the ecological protection priority scenario for the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Our research provides a reference for the sustainability of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Lijing & Zhang, Lu & Xiao, Yi & Kong, Lingqiao & Ouyang, Zhiyun, 2025. "Identifying suitable areas for cropland and urban development in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:150:y:2025:i:c:s0264837724004150
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107462
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837724004150
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107462?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Palomo, Ignacio & Martín-López, Berta & Potschin, Marion & Haines-Young, Roy & Montes, Carlos, 2013. "National Parks, buffer zones and surrounding lands: Mapping ecosystem service flows," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 4(C), pages 104-116.
    2. Norman Myers & Russell A. Mittermeier & Cristina G. Mittermeier & Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca & Jennifer Kent, 2000. "Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities," Nature, Nature, vol. 403(6772), pages 853-858, February.
    3. Jeffrey O. Hanson & Jonathan R. Rhodes & Stuart H. M. Butchart & Graeme M. Buchanan & Carlo Rondinini & Gentile F. Ficetola & Richard A. Fuller, 2020. "Global conservation of species’ niches," Nature, Nature, vol. 580(7802), pages 232-234, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rachel A. Neugarten & Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer & Richard P. Sharp & Richard Schuster & Matthew Strimas-Mackey & Patrick R. Roehrdanz & Mark Mulligan & Arnout Soesbergen & David Hole & Christina M. Kenne, 2024. "Mapping the planet’s critical areas for biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Laxmi D. Bhatta & Sunita Chaudhary & Anju Pandit & Himlal Baral & Partha J. Das & Nigel E. Stork, 2016. "Ecosystem Service Changes and Livelihood Impacts in the Maguri-Motapung Wetlands of Assam, India," Land, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-14, June.
    3. McLennan, D. & Sharma, R., 2012. "The Delivering Ecological Services Index (DESI)," Working papers 119, Rimisp Latin American Center for Rural Development.
    4. Caviedes, Julián & Ibarra, José Tomás & Calvet-Mir, Laura & Álvarez-Fernández, Santiago & Junqueira, André Braga, 2024. "Indigenous and local knowledge on social-ecological changes is positively associated with livelihood resilience in a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    5. Maeda, Eduardo Eiji & Clark, Barnaby J.F. & Pellikka, Petri & Siljander, Mika, 2010. "Modelling agricultural expansion in Kenya's Eastern Arc Mountains biodiversity hotspot," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 103(9), pages 609-620, November.
    6. Aibo Jin & Gachen Zhang & Ping Ma & Xiangrong Wang, 2024. "Ecosystem Services Trade-Offs in the Chaohu Lake Basin Based on Land-Use Scenario Simulations," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-29, December.
    7. Jaiswal, Sreeja & Balietti, Anca & Schäffer, Daniel, 2023. "Environmental Protection and Labor Market Composition," Working Papers 0736, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    8. Drakou, E.G. & Crossman, N.D. & Willemen, L. & Burkhard, B. & Palomo, I. & Maes, J. & Peedell, S., 2015. "A visualization and data-sharing tool for ecosystem service maps: Lessons learnt, challenges and the way forward," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 134-140.
    9. Chomitz, Kenneth M. & Thomas, Timothy S. & Brandão, Antônio Salazar P., 2005. "The economic and environmental impact of trade in forest reserve obligations: a simulation analysis of options for dealing with habitat heterogeneity," Revista de Economia e Sociologia Rural (RESR), Sociedade Brasileira de Economia e Sociologia Rural, vol. 43(4), January.
    10. Gulay Cetinkaya Ciftcioglu, 2025. "Tackling the resilience of the olive landscape through nature-based solutions: a case study from the Akdeniz protected area of Northern Cyprus," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 1-19, June.
    11. Elisa Barbour & Lara Kueppers, 2012. "Conservation and management of ecological systems in a changing California," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 111(1), pages 135-163, March.
    12. Tyler M Harms & Kevin T Murphy & Xiaodan Lyu & Shane S Patterson & Karen E Kinkead & Stephen J Dinsmore & Paul W Frese, 2017. "Using landscape habitat associations to prioritize areas of conservation action for terrestrial birds," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-21, March.
    13. van der Hoff, Richard & Nascimento, Nathália & Fabrício-Neto, Ailton & Jaramillo-Giraldo, Carolina & Ambrosio, Geanderson & Arieira, Julia & Afonso Nobre, Carlos & Rajão, Raoni, 2022. "Policy-oriented ecosystem services research on tropical forests in South America: A systematic literature review," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    14. Brannstrom, Christian, 2001. "Conservation-with-Development Models in Brazil's Agro-Pastoral Landscapes," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(8), pages 1345-1359, August.
    15. Brendan Fisher & Stephen Polasky & Thomas Sterner, 2011. "Conservation and Human Welfare: Economic Analysis of Ecosystem Services," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 48(2), pages 151-159, February.
    16. Pütz, S. & Groeneveld, J. & Alves, L.F. & Metzger, J.P. & Huth, A., 2011. "Fragmentation drives tropical forest fragments to early successional states: A modelling study for Brazilian Atlantic forests," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 222(12), pages 1986-1997.
    17. Paige, Sarah B. & Malavé, Carly & Mbabazi, Edith & Mayer, Jonathan & Goldberg, Tony L., 2015. "Uncovering zoonoses awareness in an emerging disease ‘hotspot’," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 78-86.
    18. Stephanie D. Maier & Jan Paul Lindner & Javier Francisco, 2019. "Conceptual Framework for Biodiversity Assessments in Global Value Chains," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-34, March.
    19. Sehgal, Shaina & Babu, Suresh, 2021. "Economic Transformation of the Nicobar Islands Post-tsunami: A Material Import–Export Analysis," Ecology, Economy and Society - the INSEE Journal, Indian Society of Ecological Economics (INSEE), vol. 4(02), July.
    20. Poonam Tripathi & Mukund Dev Behera & Partha Sarathi Roy, 2017. "Optimized grid representation of plant species richness in India—Utility of an existing national database in integrated ecological analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-13, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:150:y:2025:i:c:s0264837724004150. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.