Re-greening rural areas in the Yangtze basin

Re-greening measures, reflected in the changes of land use, are adopted to restore the degraded ecosystems in China. The altered structure of vegetation and soil influences ecosystem services like water regulation and carbon sequestration. This project aims to study the impacts of land use and climate change on agriculture and ecosystems and to improve the balance between these two systems. To this end remote sensing data of land and climate will be utilized to analyse historical changes in the study area of the Yangtze basin, China. A modelling approach will be used to analyse the underlying biophysical processes and to assess the effectiveness of land use and land restoration policies under climate change scenarios.