As a nature‐based and cost‐effective solution, forestation plays a crucial role in combating global warming, biodiversity collapse, environmental degradation, and global well‐being. Although China is acknowledged as a global leader of forestation and has achieved considerable overall success in environmental improvements through mega‐forestation programs, many negative effects have also emerged at local scales due to the plant...

Large‐scale planted forests (PF) have been given a higher priority in China for improving the environment and mitigating climate change relative to natural forests (NF). However, the ecological consequences of these PF on water resource security have been less considered in the national scale. Moreover, a critically needed comparison on key ecological effects between PF and NF under climate change has rarely been conducted. He...

Aim Winter snow has been suggested to regulate terrestrial carbon (C) cycling by modifying microclimate, but the impacts of change in snow cover on the annual C budget at a large scale are poorly understood. Our aim is to quantify the C balance under changing snow depth. Location Non‐permafrost region of the northern forest area. Methods Here, we used site‐based eddy covariance flux data to investigate the relationship between...

Variations in seasonal snowfall regulate regional and global climatic systems and vegetation growth by changing energy budgets of the lower atmosphere and land surface. We investigated the effects of snow on the start of growing season ( SGS ) of temperate vegetation in C hina. Across the entire temperate region in C hina, the winter snow depth increased at a rate of 0.15 cm yr −1 ( P = 0.07) during the period 1982–1998, and d...