Long-term ecological restoration increased plant diversity and soil total phosphorus content of the alpine flowing sand land in northwest Sichuan, China.

The ecological restoration techniques that combine grazing, sand barriers with willows, fertilization, artificial planting, and continuous management are increasingly adopted in the management of flowing sandy land in high-altitude and cold regions. However, few studies have focused on the long-term ecological restoration effects of such technologies. This study systematically compared the vegetation and soil characteristics under different ecological restoration durations (0 (CK), 3 (F1), 14 (F2), 26 (F3), and 46 (F4) years) in the alpine sandy land of northwest Sichuan. The results showed that, with the increase of ecological restoration durations, (1) the aboveground and underground biomass of plants, and species number significantly increased, while the shannon-wiener index, margalef index, and simpson index dramatically decreased; (2) in the early stage of ecological restoration (0-3 yr), Cyperaceae accounted for the main groups, while in the late stage of ecological restoration (14-46 yr), Leguminosae and Forb groups predominated; (3) ecological restoration durations significantly influenced the total phosphorus (TP) content at a soil depth of 0-60 cm, but soil organic carbon and C/P ratio were only significantly impacted at 40-60 cm; (4) the plant and soil characteristics of F1, F2, and F3 treatments were more similar, and CK and F4 treatments were clearly distinguished on PC1 of principal component analysis; (5) there was no significant correlation between Leguminosae groups and environmental factors. Instead, a correlation between total nitrogen (TN) and Forb groups, Gramineae groups, and Cyperaceae groups was revealed. TN was very significantly positively correlated with species diversity and TP. Long-term ecological restoration improved plants biomass, plant species diversity, functional plant groups, and increased soil TP content in the alpine sandy land of northwest Sichuan.

The development and future frontiers of global ecological restoration projects in the twenty-first century: a systematic review based on scientometrics.

Ecological restoration projects are becoming a mainstream of research, and their studies are widely followed by scholars worldwide, yet there is no comprehensive review of this research. Nowadays, bibliometrics has attracted much attention from the scientific community, and its methodological approach allows quantitative and qualitative analysis of research performance in journals or subject areas. This paper provides a systematic and comprehensive description of the progress and hotspots of ecological restoration projects from a bibliometric perspective, based on 1173 articles in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. Research on ecological restoration projects has shown a positive growth trend since the twenty-first century. China and the USA are the most active countries in terms of the number of relevant articles published, and more than half of the top 10 active institutions are from China, but there is less collaboration between different countries/institutions. Research in ecological restoration projects is summarized into three main research areas: the main ecological damage problems, the impact of human beings on ecological damage, and the main methods of ecological restoration. Finally, some challenges and outlooks conducive to the rapid and balanced development of ecological restoration projects are presented, which provide valuable references and help for future researchers.