Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: China's food security strategy is shifting beyond cultivated land-based grain production toward diversified food sources and ecological sustainability. Grasslands play a critical role in this transition, supporting livestock production while providing multiple ecosystem services. However, agricultural intensification and cultivated land–grassland competition increasingly threaten their multifunctionality. Taking Inner Mongolia, a region that epitomizes these challenges, as a case study, this research develops a static ecological risk diagnostic framework under current (2024) land-use, integrating ecosystem service assessment and evaluation of land-use alignment with natural conditions. The results show that medium risk areas dominate Inner Mongolia (82.14%) and are primarily associated with ecosystem service-related risks. Among these, ecosystem services conflict on grasslands represents the largest share (58.97%), where high habitat quality co-occurs with low water yield and soil conservation. In terms of land-use alignment, although cultivated land is theoretically subject to broader natural constraints, a larger proportion of existing grassland lies within highly constrained environments. High risk areas further reveal contrasting risk patterns: cultivated land unsuitability is mainly associated with multiple ecosystem service deficiencies, whereas grassland vulnerability consistently co-occurs with ecosystem services conflict. These risk patterns imply different management priorities. High-risk cultivated land highlights the need for ecological restoration to recover ecosystem functionality, whereas widespread medium-risk grasslands call for landscape-scale enhancement of service synergies through region-specific and multi-stakeholder collaboration. The proposed framework provides a transferable approach for identifying restoration priorities and guiding sustainable land-use planning in Inner Mongolia and other agro-pastoral regions, supporting the coordinated achievement of both ecological and food security.
Source: Ecological Indicators
Authors: Yawen Kang, Ainhoa González Del Campo
Institution: University College Dublin
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDGs: Life on land, Zero hunger
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,650
Funder: China Scholarship Council
OpenAlex ID: W7204932994