To examine potential outcomes of future scenarios, the researchers at IGRE (in collaboration with their colleagues) have developed several models that incorporate the human, climate, natural, and land-use systems in the Mongolian rangeland ecosystem to study rangeland responses to climate change and social-ecological transformation. For instance, two-panel data models (the composite and the individual) were developed to explore causal relationships between climatic variables and vegetation growth across distinct plant communities and over time. Both panel regression models confirmed that vegetation growth responses to regional climate changes were shaped by the unique characteristics of the study area and that the interactions between vegetation growth and climate were dependent on a variety of spatially and temporally varying contextual factors. In another project, we surveyed over 750 households arrayed along an ecological gradient and matched across the national border in Mongolia and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, asking what changes in livelihoods strategies households made over the last ten years, and analyzed these choices in two broad categories of options: diversification and livestock management. We combined these data with remotely sensed information about vegetation growth and self-reported exposure to price fluctuations. Our statistical results showed that households experiencing lower ecological and economic variability, higher average levels of vegetation growth, and greater levels of material wealth, were often those that undertook more actions to improve their conditions in the face of variability. The findings have implications both for how interventions aimed at supporting ongoing choices might be targeted and for theory construction related to social adaptation.

 Xie, Y., Fan, S., & Zhou, C. (2021). Examining ecosystem deterioration using a Total socioenvironmental system approach. Science of The Total Environment, 147171, https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1cyVJB8ccquVR

Z Sha, Y Bai, H Lan, X Liu, R Li, Y Xie (2020). Can more carbon be captured by grasslands? A case study of Inner Mongolia, China. Science of The Total Environment 723, 138085

T Chen, Y Xie, C Liu, Y Bai, A Zhang, L Mao, S Fan (2018). Trend analysis of relationship between primary productivity, precipitation and temperature in Inner Mongolia. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 7 (6), 214.

Y Xie, Y Zhang, H Lan, L Mao, S Zeng, Y Chen (2018). Investigating long-term trends of climate change and their spatial variations caused by regional and local environments through data mining. Journal of Geographical Sciences 28 (6), 802-818

Y Xie, D Crary, Y Bai, X Cui, A Zhang (2016). Modeling grassland ecosystem responses to coupled climate and socioeconomic influences in multi-spatial-and-temporal scales. J. Environ. Inform 33, 37-46.

Mi, J., Li, J., Chen, D., Xie, Y., & Bai, Y., 2014. Predominant control of moisture on soil organic carbon mineralization across a broad range of arid and semiarid ecosystems on the Mongolia plateau. Landscape Ecology (published online 18 May 2014; DOI 10.1007/s10980-014-0040-0).

Brown, D.G., Agrawal, A., Sass, D.A., Wang, J., Hua, J., & Xie, Y., 2013. Responses to Climate and Economic Risks and Opportunities across National and Ecological Boundaries: Changing Household Strategies on the Mongolian Plateau, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (045011), doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/4/045011, 9pp.

Li, S., Xie, Y., Brown, D.G., Bai, B., Jinhua, J., & Judd, K., 2013. Spatial variability of the adaptation of grassland vegetation to climatic change in Inner Mongolia of China. Applied Geography, 43: 1-12, DOI: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2013.05.008.

Liu, Y. and Xie, Y. 2013. Measuring the dragging effect of natural resources on economic growth: evidence from a space-time panel filter modeling in China. Annuals of Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 1539-1551