Distinguishing the Impacts of Land Use and Climate Change on Soil Loss in the Tibetan Plateau

ABSTRACT Land use and climate change are crucial factors driving changes in soil loss; however, there is limited research quantitatively distinguishing their impacts. Therefore, by using InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Service and Trade‐offs) and RWEQ (Revised Wind Erosion Equation) models to assess soil loss by water (SL water ) and soil loss by wind (SL wind ), we quantitatively differentiated the impacts of land use and climate change on soil loss through scenario settings of six periods during 1990–2020 in the Tibetan Plateau, identified dominant factors and explored trends in the impacts of land use or climate change on SL water and SL wind . The results indicate that the regions where climate change dominated soil loss change accounted for 53.5%–97.2% of the total area. However, in the Inner, Yellow and Mekong River Basins, during 1990–2000 and 2015–2020, when land use change was significant, the impacts of land use on soil loss were greater than those of climate change, becoming the primary factor. The southeastern part of Tibet and the northwestern part of the Tibetan Plateau are the high‐value zones of SL water and SL wind , respectively. Furthermore, during the whole study period from 1990 to 2020, climate change intensified SL water in the southeast and mitigated it in the northwest, while, on the contrary, it intensified SL wind in the northwest and mitigated it in the southeast. On the other hand, land use changes intensified SL water and SL wind in the southeast and mitigated them in the northwest. The framework of this study contributes to a deeper understanding of land use and climate change effects on soil loss, and our results hold significant implications for ecological restoration decisions in the Tibetan Plateau.