Assessing the impacts of human activities and climate variations on grassland productivity by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM)
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2017
Department/School
Geography and Geology
Publication Title
Journal of Arid Land
Abstract
The cause-effect associations between geographical phenomena are an important focus in ecological research. Recent studies in structural equation modeling (SEM) demonstrated the potential for analyzing such associations. We applied the variance-based partial least squares SEM (PLS-SEM) and geographically-weighted regression (GWR) modeling to assess the human-climate impact on grassland productivity represented by above-ground biomass (AGB). The human and climate factors and their interaction were taken to explain the AGB variance by a PLS-SEM developed for the grassland ecosystem in Inner Mongolia, China. Results indicated that 65.5% of the AGB variance could be explained by the human and climate factors and their interaction. The case study showed that the human and climate factors imposed a significant and negative impact on the AGB and that their interaction alleviated to some extent the threat from the intensified human-climate pressure. The alleviation may be attributable to vegetation adaptation to high human-climate stresses, to human adaptation to climate conditions or/and to recent vegetation restoration programs in the highly degraded areas. Furthermore, the AGB response to the human and climate factors modeled by GWR exhibited significant spatial variations. This study demonstrated that the combination of PLS-SEM and GWR model is feasible to investigate the cause-effect relation in socio-ecological systems.
Link to Published Version
Recommended Citation
Sha, Z., Xie, Y., Tan, X., Bai, Y., Li, J., & Liu, X. (2017). Assessing the impacts of human activities and climate variations on grassland productivity by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Journal of Arid Land, 9(4), 473–488. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40333-017-0022-6