Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939

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Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

Analysis on net primary productivity change of forests and its multi–level T

driving mechanism – A case study in Changbai Mountains in Northeast
China
Chunli Wanga,b, Qun'ou Jianga,b,c,⁎, Bernard Engeld, Johann Alexander Vera Mercadod,
Zhonghui Zhange
a
School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
b
Key Laboratory of Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Prevention, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
c
Jinyun Forest Ecosystem Research Station, School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China
d
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette 47907, United States
e
Jilin Provincial Academy of Forestry Sciences, Changchun 130021, China

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords:
Net Primary Productivity (NPP)
Spatial autocorrelation analysis
Multi–level driving mechanism
Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM)
Changbai Mountains in Northeast China
It is significant to clarify the driving mechanism of the forest ecosystem changes at different scales in Northeast
China with serious forest degradation. With Changbai Mountains in Northeast China as the study area, this study
integrated multi–source data to explore the spatio–temporal changes of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) and its
spatial agglomeration patterns, and probed its multi–level driving mechanism based on the Hierarchical Linear
Model (HLM). The results showed the overall NPP in the study area had a gradual declining trend from southeast
to northwest from 2001 to 2015. Besides, the ecological risk regions, including Low-Low (L–L) and High–Low
(H–L) cluster types, expanded from 27.56% during 2001–2008 to 28.21% during 2008–2015, suggesting the
local departments should focus on optimizing these regions and strengthen the construction of complex forests
with large age differences to make the ecological environment healthier. In addition, results from the HLM
suggested that key driving factors, e.g., the precipitation and vegetation coverage rate, had significant promoting
effects on NPP at the grid scale. Whereas the soil organic matter content, distance to the highway, irrigation rate,
percentage of the disaster area had significant inhibitory effects (p<0.01) on ecological environment at the
watershed scale. Finally, the increase of the total investment in ecological engineering might directly promote
the ecological recovery at the county scale. Those results could provide a reasonable scientific basis for the
rational development and utilization of regional forest resources, and sustainable socio–economic development.

1. Introduction development of human beings and raised policy issues at global,

Forests occupying approximately 30% of the Earth's land area are
essential to approximately 1.6 billion people that depends on them as a
source of livelihood, employment and income generation (UN, 2017).
Forests not only offer a material basis for the survival and development
of human beings and a variety of organisms, but also provide multiple
non-physical ecological functions, e.g., water conservation and en-
vironmental purification, which plays a decisive role in improving
ecological environment and promoting the progress of technology and
society (Negi et al., 2019). However, the unreasonable development
and utilization of forest resources has led to serious degradation of
forests, and the rapid decrease of forests has threatened the sustainable
countrywide and regional scales due to associated environmental,
socio–economic impacts from different dimensions, and therefore, it is
of great importance to explore their dynamics of the forest ecosystem
(Drummond and Loveland, 2010; Kogo et al., 2019)
The forests degradation can be characterized with Net Primary
Productivity (NPP) degradation to a certain extent, and NPP has be-
come one of the indispensable core contents in studying the impacts of
global change on the forest ecosystem (Turn et al., 2016; Liu et al.,
2017; Chi et al., 2018). Consistent and precise monitoring of the spa-
tio–temperal changes of forest NPP is of greatly significance to explore
the underlying causes of forest degradation in order to provide ade-
quate information that can support strategies, policies and decisions of

Corresponding author at: School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China.
⁎

E-mail addresses: chunliwang@bjfu.edu.cn (C. Wang), jiangqo@bjfu.edu.cn (Q. Jiang), engelb@purdue.edu (B. Engel), vera3@purdue.edu (J.A.V. Mercado),
zzhgiszzh@163.com (Z. Zhang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119939
Received 23 September 2019; Received in revised form 19 January 2020; Accepted 28 January 2020
Available online 26 February 2020
0040-1625/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
C. Wang, et al.
protecting and managing the forest ecosystem (MacDicken, 2015;
Iacopetti et al., 2019; He et al., 2019). However, in many cases, the
spatial pattern of NPP degradation is not random since it is usually
affected by the neighborhood (Nguyen and Vu, 2019). In other words, it
tends to be a pattern of spatial autocorrelation or spatial correlation, in
which the variation rate decreases as the distance increases between
spatial points (Zhan et al., 2012), and therefore exploring the spatial
autocorrelation of NPP can provide an important basis for the forest
ecosystem management (Cliff and Ord, 1981). Additionally, the ex-
ternal drivers of forest degradation should also be explored in depth
since the forest ecosystem is sensitive to external disturbances due to
the influence of climate and human activities (Potter et al., 2014;
Yan et al., 2016).
In view of the complexity of the forest ecosystem, the driving me-
chanism causing its change is also quite complex, and many scholars
have explored various driving factors of forest NPP in different regions.
For example, Zhan et al. (2012) and Fabricante et al. (2009) assessed
the relative contributions of climate change and human activities to
NPP with regression analysis. Chi et al. (2018) used a grazing pressure
index to assess the effects of grazing on variations of vegetation NPP in
the Xinlingol Grassland, China. Yan et al. (2016) analyzed the influence
of different factors on NPP changes with a scenario simulation method
and explored the relative contribution of urbanization and climate
change to NPP with a spatial intuitive method. However, most of the
above studies have seldom taken into account the scale effects into the
driving mechanism analysis. Actually, it is more important to explore
the driving factors of the forest ecosystem at different scales (Ren et al.,
2007), and some scholars have carried out some relevant research with
multiple methods such as the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM), which
can incorporate the multi–source data from the individual level to the
higher level into the regression model and can take the scale effects into
account to provide references for accurate management of the forest
ecosystem and construction of ecological civilization (Chen et al.,
2019).
Northeast China is one of the ecologically sensitive areas, and this
study aims to understand the driving mechanism of the forest ecosystem
in Changbai Mountains in Northeast China, where both natural factors
and human activities can significantly influence the forest ecosystem
dynamics. Specifically, the goals of this study are: 1) to analyze the
spatio-temporal changes of forest NPP in the study area from 2001 to
2015 by using the Global Production Efficiency Model (GLO–PEM); 2)
to evaluate the aggregation of NPP in the whole and local areas of the
study area using a spatial autocorrelation analysis method; 3) to explore
the impacts of potential driving factors on NPP change at different
scales based on the HLM, and further reveal the interaction between
different scales.
2. Study area
This study takes Changbai Mountains in Northeast China, including
the southern part of the Heilongjiang Province and the northern part of
Jilin Province as the study area. As can be seen from Fig. 1, the
Changbai Mountains in Northeast China consist of the Changbai
Mountain and Zhangguangcai Mountain which belongs to branch of
Changbai Mountains. This region expands across the warm temperate
zone, middle temperate zone and cold temperate zone from south to
north, with a temperate monsoon climate. The annual precipitation
decreases with the increase of distance to the coastline distance from
the southeast, and the annual rainfall ranges from 400 mm to 1100 mm.
Affected by the eastern Asian monsoon, winter is relatively long and
could in this area. In addition, this region has some of the most fertile
soils in the world, and the soils include black soil and chernozem
(Xu et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2019). At the same time, this area is also
an important forests production base in China. The vegetation types
mainly include coniferous forests, shrub and grassland in the cold
temperate zone (Fu et al., 2018). In general, the typical heat change and
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939
humidity difference in the research area, coupled with the unique ve-
getation distribution pattern, have made it a sensitive area for global
change and terrestrial ecosystem research.
3. Material and methodology
3.1. Data source and processing
In this study, HLM is used to explore the potential drivers of eco-
logical environment quality changes of Changbai Mountains in
Northeast China, with NPP as the dependent variable to measure eco-
logical degradation. The NPP changes are driven by very complicate
natural geographical factors, e.g., terrain, geomorphology, and soil at-
tributes, vegetation types, meteorological conditions, location and so-
cio–economic conditions. Therefore, this study divided these potential
driving factors into the following three levels (Table 1). Concretely, the
time–variant socio–economic variables at the county scale were used as
level 3 variables, e.g., the total investment (invest). The level 2 vari-
ables included natural environment variables (slope, splain, strick,
irshr), soil attributes variables (soil–org, sand), location condition fac-
tors (d2highw, d2portc) and socio–economic variables (pop, gdp). The
time-variant climate variables (ssd, pre), vegetation factor (veg),
landform (lfm) and year variable were used as level 1 variables.
3.1.1. Meteorological data
Meteorological data from 2001 to 2015 were obtained from the
China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/). The data
included annual sunshine hours and precipitation. Based on the latitude
and longitude of each meteorological station, an Anuspline interpola-
tion method was applied to obtain grid data with the same projection,
temporal and spatial resolution in this study.
3.1.2. Natural environment data
Natural environment data used in this study included basic geo-
graphic data, e.g., slope, proportion of plain area in county (splain),
percentage of the disaster area (strick), irrigation rate (irshr) and soil
properties data. Slope data and proportion of plain area in county
(splain) on each 1 × 1 km grid cell were extracted from elevation data
derived from a 1:250,000 digital ground elevation model (DEM). The
soil properties data, including soil organic matter content (soil–org) and
sand content (sand), were acquired from the Cold and Dry Area
Scientific Data Center (http://westdc.westgis.ac.cn/) and the Second
China Soil Survey, which was converted to spatial data using the
Kriging interpolation method.
3.1.3. Vegetation data
A digital vegetation map in 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2015 in
Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinceswas provided by the Resources and
Environment Data Cloud Platform, Chinese Academy of Sciences
(http://www.resdc.cn). There were more than 43 categories of land
cover types (Deng et al., 2008). In this study, there were five forest
categories including temperate coniferous forest, cold temperate and
temperate mountain coniferous forest, temperate deciduous broad-
leaved forest, mixed forest of temperate coniferous and deciduous
broadleaf, and temperate deciduous shrub.
3.1.4. Location condition and social–economic data
Location condition data mainly consisted of the distance from each
grid to highway and port city, those data were obtained by using the
spatial distance analysis tools based on the spatial distribution maps of
highway and port city. The total investment (invest) in county level
from 2001 to 2015 was taken from the National Bureau of Statistics of
China (http://data.stats.gov.cn/). The socio–economic factors in 2000,
2005, 2010 and 2015 were taken from the Resources and
Environmental Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (http://www.
resdc.cn), including the gross domestic product (gdp), population
C. Wang, et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939

Fig. 1. Location of Changbai Mountains in Northeast China.

Table 1 2001–2015 from the MODIS MODND1D product (http://www.gscloud.

Dependent and independent variables in the HLM. cn/) was used to synthesize the maximum NDVI using the
Variable Unit Meanings Mean MaximumValue Composite (MVC) method , and then estimated the
Abbreviation stress coefficients of high temperature (Tɛ1). Fraction of Absorbed
Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FPAR) from Terra MOD15A2H
Dependent variable
product and surface reflectance from MOD09A1 product during
NPP gC⋅m−2⋅a−1 Net Primary Productivity 583.22
Independent
2001–2015 were all obtained from the NASA website (https://ladsweb.
variable modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/). These data were used to estimate the total
Level 1 NPP from 2001 to 2015.
ssd h sunshine hours 2031.80
pre mm precipitation 678.3
veg % vegetation coverage rate 44.32 3.2. Methodology
year – – –
lfm – landform – 3.2.1. GLO–PEM for the NPP estimation
The Global Production Efficiency Model (GLO–PEM) based on light
Level 2
slope 0.01 slope 341.52
use efficiency is used to simulate the NPP of forests in the study area,
soil–org mg/kg soil organic matter 6.17 which has been broadly used in studies of China . In this study, the NPP
content from 2001 to 2015 was estimated from the Absorbed Photosynthetic
sand % sand content 38.58 Active Radiation (APAR) and light use efficiency (ε), which was ex-
d2highw km distance to the highway 135.26
pressed as shown in Eq. (1). More details can be found in these refer-
d2portc km distance to the port city 678.35
splain % proportion of plain area 25.21 ences (Goetz et al., 1999; Huang et al., 2010; Pei et al., 2013; Kai et al.,
in county 2015; Zhang et al., 2015).
strick % percentage of the disaster 45.66
area NPP (x , t ) = APAR (x , t ) × (x , t ) (1)
irshr % irrigation rate 16.87
pop person/ km2 population density 105.51
where NPP(x,t) represents Net Primary Productivity of pixel x at time t,
gdp million yuan/ gross domestic product 26.30 APAR(x,t) refers to the Absorbed Photosynthetic Active Radiation, and
km2 ε(x, t) is light use efficiency under the same conditions. The APAR
Level 3 mainly depends on the following two variables.
invest million yuan total investment 1.24
APAR (x , t ) = FPAR (x , t )*PAR (x , t ) (2)

where PAR(x,t) refers to Photosynthetically Active Radiation of pixel x

density (pop). This dataset has a temporal resolution of 5–year and a
at time t, FPAR(x,t) is Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active
spatial resolution of 1 km.
Radiation of pixel x at time t.

3.1.5. Remote sensing data 3.2.2. Spatial autocorrelation analysis

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images during Spatial autocorrelation analysis is a method that is to test whether

3
C. Wang, et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939

the observed value of a variable with a spatial position is significantly where β0j and ɛij respectively represent the mean intercept and the
related to the observed value at the adjacent spatial point. There are random individual variation around the mean of group j; γ00 represents
many methods and indexes to represent spatial autocorrelation, among the overall intercept, that is the grand mean value of Yij; μ0j is variation
which Moran's I statistic is the most commonly used. Generally, Moran's between the mean values of the group, that is, the difference between
I statistics could be divided into global spatial autocorrelation and local the mean intercept value and grand mean of group j. The variance Yij of
spatial autocorrelation (Martin and David., 1996). this group is expressed as follows.
Global spatial autocorrelation analysis mainly reflects the overall 2 2
Var (Yij ) = Var ( + µ 0j + ij ) = + (6)
trend of spatial correlation of observed variables in the whole research 00 u0

region (Betts et al., 2006). In this study, Moran's index was used to 2
where σ is the within–group variance at the first–level of HLM, u0 2 is
measure the global spatial autocorrelation, whose calculation formula the between–group variance. As for an empty model or a random model
was as follows. with only an intercept, the ratio of inter–group variance to total var-
n n
w (x x¯)(xj x¯) iance is called inter–group correlation coefficient (ICC), as shown in the
i=1 j = 1 ij i
Moran s I = n following formulas.
i=1
(x i x¯) 2 (3)
ICC = u0
2/(
u0
2 + 2)
(7)
Local spatial autocorrelation index can be used to test whether there
is variable aggregation phenomenon in local areas. In this study, the where ICC is used to estimate the ratio of variance between different
Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) was used to measure the groups, which not only reflects inter–group variation, but also re-
local spatial autocorrelation, whose calculation formula was as follows presents the correlation between individuals in the same group. If the
(Forey et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2019). Based on the clustering results, ICC value is high, it means that the HLM can be used.
spatial distribution patterns can be divided into 4 cluster types, in-
cluding High–High (H–H), Low–Low (L–L), High–Low (H–L) and (2) Model 2 (random effect regression model): The explanatory vari-
Low–High (L–H) cluster types (Dai et al., 2017). able in level 2 was added to the null model. For simplicity, an ex-
n planatory variable (W1j) in level 2 was used to reflect inter–group
xi x¯ variation. In this model, the individual characteristics did not be
Local Moran s I = Wij (xj x¯)
m i=1 (4) considered, i.e. explanatory variables in level 1, when testing the
where m = (
n
xj 1) xi and xj are the NPP value of
2 )/(n x¯ 2 , relationship between group mean outcome and group level vari-
j = 1, j i
sample i and j, n is the total number of the sample regions, x̄ is the ables.
average NPP of the whole study area, Wij is the spatial weight matrix Level1: Yij = +
0j ij

Level2: = + 01 W1j + µ0j

3.2.3. Hierarchical Linear Model 0j 00

The HLM is a statistical methodology used to analyze the nested–- Level3: Yij = [ + 01 W1j ] + [ + µ 0j ]
00 ij
(8)
structure data. By establishing regression models for the data at dif-
ferent scales, the mode and degree of effect of explanatory variables on
dependent variables under different scales are estimated. In order to (3) Model 3 (random intercept model): In the third step, the ex-
better explore the main driving factors of ecological environment at planatory variable in level 1 was incorporated into the intercept
different scales in the study area, this study used a three–layer linear model, and then all slopes in level 1 were treated as fixed slopes.
model to analyze the driving mechanism of NPP at the grid, watershed That was to say, this model only included one explanatory variable
and county scales. in level 1 with fixed effect, which was listed in the following
When the HLM processed the hierarchical data, firstly, the intercept equations.
measurement variation was checked by building an intercept model or
Level1: Yij = + 1j Xij + ij
empty model. The null model was used to judge whether there were
0j

differences in driving the restoration of grid–scale ecological environ- Level2: 0j = 00 + 01 W1j + µ0j 1j = 10 + µ1j
ment at the watershed and county scales, and to judge whether the HLM Level3: Yij = [ 00 + 01 W1j + 1j Xij ] + [ ij + µ 0j + µ1j ]
(9)
was applicable in this study. Secondly, the regression equation was
established with the characteristic variables of the level 2. Then, this
study used the characteristic variables of level 1 as independent vari- (4) Model 4 (mixed–effects model): The model 4 includes variables of
ables to establish the quadratic regression equation by taking the in- multiple levels including level 1 and level 2. In this model, the
tercept and slope in the level 2 as dependent variables. Finally, a random slope at level 1 could be used to examine the cross–layer
complete model was constructed to comprehensively explain the in- interactions in the model, which not only considers the nested
teraction of different factors at different scales, as well as the impact of structure of data, but also estimates cross–level interactions.
different driving factors on the ecological environment in the study
Level1: Yij = + 1j Xij +
area. In detail, this HLM was mainly divided into the following four 0j ij

sub–models. Level2: 0j = 00 + 01 W1j + µ0j 1j = 10 + 11

W1j + µ1j
(1) Model 1 (Null model): The null model is the basis of HLM, which is
used to determine whether the HLM or general regression for Level3: Yij = [ 00 + 01 W1j + 10 + 11 W1j]
analysis should be used (Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002). The empty +[ + µ 0j + µ1j ]
model was given by the following formulas.
ij
(10)

Level1: Yij = 0j + ij

Level2: = + µ 0j
0j 00
4. Results
Level3: Yij = + µ 0j +
00 ij
(5)
4.1. Spatio–temporal changes of NPP in different periods

This study explored the spatial changes of NPP of Changbai

4
C. Wang, et al.
Fig. 2. Spatial distribution of NPP in the study area in different periods.
Fig. 3. LISA cluster of NPP of the study area in different periods of 2001–2008, 2008–2015 and 2001–2015.
Mountains in Northeast China in two stages, which was the project of
returning farmlands to forests in the first phrase (2001–2008) and the
project of returning farmlands to forests in the second phrase
(2008–2015) (Fig. 2). Overall, the NPP showed a gradual decline from
southeast to northwest. From 2001 to 2015, the average NPP in the
whole study area was about 583.2 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1. Concretely, NPP with
higher values, that was between 700–1200 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1, mainly dis-
tributed in the south of Zhangguangcai Mountain and most areas of the
Changbai Mountain, accounting for 62.12% of the total area. And the
NPP in the middle–value area ranged from 500 to 700 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1
accounting for 24.98% of the total study area, mainly distributed in the
western and northern parts of the study area. The low–value NPP area
between 0–500 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1 was embedded in the northwest and cen-
tral parts, accounting for 12.90% of the total area, where the main
vegetation types were primary crops, hardy cash crops and meadows.
To some extent, it indicated that the ecological environment quality in
these areas was quite poor.
As seen from the spatial distribution characteristics of NPP from
different stages, there was strong spatial heterogeneity during the
periods of 2001–2008, 2008–2015 and 2001–2015, respectively. From
the period of 2001–2008 to 2008–2015, the low-value NPP area (0–500
gC⋅m−2⋅a−1) that was mainly distributed in the northwest and
5
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939
northeast regions transferred significantly to the middle–value area
(500–700 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1), resulting in an increase of 24.18% in the
middle–value area. However, NPP still showed a slight downward trend
from 2001–2008 to 2008–2015 due to the influence of potential drivers,
and its average NPP decreased from 766.9 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1 to 764.09
gC⋅m−2⋅a−1. In addition, the area with the higher–value NPP
(900–1200 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1) also decreased slightly by 4.25% during this
period, which was located in the south of Changbai Mountain and
southeast parts of Zhangguangcai Mountain. The above researches all
showed that the overall NPP in the study area had a downward trend
although the area with the low–value NPP decreased after the im-
plementation of the natural forest protection project. It can be seen that
the overall rational planning and adjustment of northeast land still need
to be further strengthened.
4.2. Global and local spatial autocorrelation characteristics of NPP in
different periods
As seen from Fig. 3, there was a strong positive correlation between
the spatial autocorrelation distributions of NPP in the study area, sug-
gesting the phenomenon of spatial agglomeration in these regions was
remarkable. As seen from the period of 2001–2008 and 2008–2015, the
C. Wang, et al.
Moran's I was all above 0.8 during these periods. However, the index of
the latter stage was slightly lower than that of the former stage, in-
dicating that the spatial agglomeration of NPP in the study area de-
creased to some extent with time went by. This is due to the expansion
of cultivated land area in this region and unreasonable structure con-
figuration of various forest types, it is bound to have a strong impact on
the spatial agglomeration and restoration of forest ecosystem.
In addition, this study also conducted the comprehensive analysis
combined with the exploration of LISA cluster diagrams to reveal the
spatial autocorrelation trend of NPP among local areas in the study
area. The results revealed that the NPP had similar clustering and dis-
tribution characteristics during the periods of 2001–2008, 2008–2015,
and 2001–2015. As can be seen from Fig. 3, the H–H region was mainly
distributed in the northeast and southeast of the study area, indicating
that the vegetation coverage in this region was relatively good, while
the L–L cluster region was mainly distributed in the northwest of the
study area. The results also displayed that the ecological environment
has degraded slightly from the period of 2001–2008 to 2008–2015.
Overall, the expansion of ecological risk regions was slightly greater
than that of ecologically safe regions. Concretely, the ecological safe
regions, including H–H and L–H cluster types, expanded from 27.55%
to 27.62% of the total area in these two periods, respectively. These
regions were mainly distributed in the northwest region and the eastern
region of the study area. In contrast, the ecological risk regions, in-
cluding L–L and H–L cluster types, were mainly distributed in the
northern and western parts of Zhangguangcai Mountain. Also, it can
been seen that the ecological risk regions expanded from 27.56% to
28.21% of the area during the period of 2001–2008 to 2008–2015.
4.3. Driving mechanism of the forest ecosystem changes at different scales
4.3.1. Results of the four sub–models of HLM from 2001 to 2015
As seen from Table 2, this study presented the results of the four
sub–models of the HLM. According to the null model, it showed that the
random effects at both the watershed scale and the county scale passed
the significance test. The variances at level 1, 2 and 3 were 52,661.82,
62,273.44 and 56,082.85, respectively. Moreover, the proportion of
variance at the grid scale, watershed scale and county scale in the total
variance was 30.79%, 36.41% and 32.79%, respectively. That was to
say, among the differences of the forest ecosystem in the study area,
30.79% was caused by the differences between grids, 36.41% by the
differences between watershed, and 32.79% by the differences between
counties. On the whole, the ICC value was calculated to be 0.54, ex-
ceeding the reference value of 0.138. It indicated that there was in-
ter–group heterogeneity in the potential drivers of ecological environ-
ment change in Changbai Mountains in Northeast China.
Through the model 2, this study screened and eliminated the vari-
ables with collinearity, and finally retained 10 explanatory variables in
model 2. Compared with model 1, the variance of model 2 decreased by
19.75% after adding level 2 variables into model 2. It showed that the
introduction of level 2 variables can explain the variance of NPP
changes at 19.75%. For model 3 with level 1 variables, the variance of
model 3 decreased by 16.43% after adding the variables, e.g., landform
(lfm), vegetation coverage rate (veg), precipitation (pre), sunshine
hours (ssd) and year, indicating that the addition of level 1 variables
can explain the variance of NPP changes by 16.43%. Since there was
only one variable in the third level, that was the total investment (in-
vest), it was not listed in the table as a separate model in this study.
Instead, it was mainly considered as an interaction. For the model 4, the
addition of level 2 variables reduced the variance of the intercept at
level 1, level 2 and level 3 by 12.56%, 38.01% and 50.84%, respec-
tively, as compared to model 3. Finally, it was found that the divorce
value of model 4 was the smallest, which indicated that the complete
model was relatively good compared to others.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939
4.3.2. Driving mechanism of NPP at different scales and in different periods
Systematical studies on the influence of driving factors on regional
NPP at multi–level and multi–time series could help to better under-
stand the driving mechanism of forest ecological environment quality
change. In this study, the comparative analysis of the driving me-
chanism of NPP during the periods of 2001–2008 (phase 1), 2008–2015
(phase 2) and 2001–2015 (phase 3) was presented in Table 3. The ICC
in phase 1 showed that 36.14% of variance could be attributed to the
watershed scale and 32.99% of variance could be attributed to the
county scale, indicating that there was a large spatial clustering at the
county scale. Likewise, the variance of ICC in phase 2 was 35.86% at
the watershed scale and 33.88% at the county scale. As for phase 3, the
36.41% variance of ICC could be attributed to the watershed scale and
32.79% at the county scale. The above studies showed that it is ne-
cessary to add new predictive variables to help explain a large pro-
portion of variances of observation values at the second level.
At the grid scale, climate factors and vegetation factors had sig-
nificant effects on NPP. When only climate factors and vegetation fac-
tors were included in the model, the effect coefficients of explanatory
variables fluctuated slightly with the time passing, indicating that their
effects were statistically stable and significant as well. For example, the
coefficient of sunshine hours (ssd) from 2001 to 2015 was −0.48,
which suggested that if sunshine hours increased, NPP showed a de-
creasing trend. The increase of sunshine hours indicated that more solar
radiation energy will lead to more droughts, which will have an in-
hibition effect on the accumulation of NPP to some extent. During the
period of 2008–2015, the absolute value of the influence coefficient of
sunshine hours (ssd) on NPP was slightly higher than that during the
period of 2001–2008, which indicated that the sensitivity of sunshine
hours on NPP increased with the time going. In addition, the pre-
cipitation (pre) was also an important factor to promote vegetation
restoration in the region. The results showed that the influence of
precipitation on vegetation restoration from the period of 2001–2008 to
2008–2015 showed a significant positive correlation (p<0.01).
Moreover, the results showed that the vegetation coverage rate (veg)
had a significant positive effect on NPP in different periods. For ex-
ample, the increase of vegetation coverage rate was conducive to the
accumulation of vegetation photosynthesis, thus it can further promote
the increase of NPP.
At the scale of watershed, the soil indicator also played an im-
portant role in influencing plant growth and distribution. This study
displayed that the soil organic matter content (soil–org) had a sig-
nificant negative correlation with NPP, and its effect coefficient was
−36.62 from 2001 to 2015. The reason is likely to that the area with
high soil fertility is gradually replaced by cultivated lands and other
lands, which results in the decrease of NPP in this area. However, the
sand content (sand) showed a significant positive impact on the NPP
during this period. The reason is probably that large–scale afforestation
mainly located in the desertification areas, which promotes the re-
covery of vegetation under the influence of national policies. NPP was
not only affected by natural factors e.g., soil properties, but also by
location condition, e.g., the distance to highway (d2highw) and to port
city (d2portc). Concretely, the influence of distance to the highway
(d2highw) on NPP was significantly negative (p<0.01), and its effect
coefficient was −2.89 during the period of 2001–2008. It indicated that
the passage of the human and livestock was blocked by the highway,
which may promote the ecological environment restoration to some
extent. On the contrary, the influence of irrigation rate (irshr) on NPP
was not significantly positive during the study period of 2001–2008,
and the slope had negative impact on NPP in different periods. As for
the percentage of the disaster area (strick), its influence on NPP was
significantly negative (p<0.01) during the period of 2001–2015, and
its effect coefficient was −2.03, indicating that the larger the disaster
area, the more difficult it was for vegetation restoration.
In order to reveal the impact of socio–economic development and
human activities in different periods, the main representative variables,
C. Wang, et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939

Table 2
Fixed effects and random effects based on the HLM from 2001 to 2015.
Variables Model 1 (null model) Model 2 (only level 2) Model 3 (only level 1) Model 4 (complete model)

Fixed effects
Intercept
Level 1 intercept, P0
Level 2 intercept, B00
Level 3 intercept, G000 505.37** 222.91** 5409.12* 3436.84***
d2highw, B01
Level 3 intercept, G010 −2.93*** −2.24***
d2portc, B02
Level 3 intercept, G020 0.85** 0.52**
irshr, B03
Level 3 intercept, G030 0.96*** −1.07***
sand, B04
Level 3 intercept, G040 2.62** 6.15***
slope, B05
Level 3 intercept, G050 −0.07*** −0.02
soil–org, B06
Level 3 intercept, G060 −11.67* −36.62***
splain, B07
Level 3 intercept, G070 −1.79* −1.61
strick, B08
Level 3 intercept, G080 −1.98** −2.03***
GDP, B09
Level 3 intercept, G090 −0.04 −0.04
pop, B010
Level 3 intercept, G0100 −0.10 −0.10***
pre, B011
Level 3 intercept, G0110 17.58*** 17.58***
ssd, B012
Level 3 intercept, G0120 −0.48** −0.48**
Level 1 slope, P1
Level 2 intercept, B10
Level 3 intercept, G100 0.37*** −0.29
Level 2 slope, P2
Level 2 intercept, B20
Level 3 intercept, G200 63.30*** 51.84***
Level 1 slope, P3
Level 2 intercept, B30
Level 3 intercept, G300 −2.55*** −1.50***
Random effects
Level 1 variance 52,661.82 52,661.03 44,011.59 38,484.67
Level 2 variance
intercept 62,273.44*** 49,974.85*** 33,570.55*** 40,811.50***
slope
Level 3 variance
intercept 56,082.85*** 8317.86*** 25,924.35*** 12,745.77
slope

Note: *p<0.1, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01.

e.g., population density (pop) and gross domestic product (gdp) were
added in the HLM to explore their potential influence on the forest
ecosystem at the watershed scale. The results showed that population
density (pop) and GDP had opposite effects on the NPP. As for the
population density (pop), its influence on NPP showed no significant
positive correlation during the study periods, among which its influence
coefficient was 0.10 during the period of 2001–2015. This is because
the population density in the research area is very low, and most of the
population is mainly concentrated in the northwest of Zhangguangcai
Mountain (branch of Changbai Mountians). With a small increase in
population and technological progress, more effective management
measures will boost the restoration of forests ecological environment
quality, eventually leading to an increase in NPP in the study area. By
contrast, the overall impact of GDP on NPP from 2001 to 2015 was
negative (p<0.05), with an impact coefficient of −0.04. This indicated
that the rapid development is not conducive to the restoration of ve-
getation. Generally, the socio–economic development may occupy fer-
tile land, consume more water resources, and eventually lead to the
decline of vegetation coverage and the decrease of the overall NPP.
At the county scale, the total investment (invest) was firstly added
at this scale to explore its direct impact on NPP. As can be seen in
Table 3, the influence coefficient was very small during the period of
2001–2015, indicating that which had a relatively weak direct effect.
Besides, this study also considered the interaction of policy variables on
population density and GDP at the watershed scale during the periods
of 2001–2008, 2008–2015 and 2001–2015 to reveal its indirect impact
on NPP. Overall, increased investment in forests protection had a sig-
nificant positive impact (p<0.01) on population density and GDP from
2001 to 2015. However, the indirect driving effect of investment
amount on NPP varied in different periods. During the period of
2001–2008, the total investment (invest) had a significant negative
impact on the population density (p<0.01) when the vegetation cov-
erage rate (veg) was added in the model 1, indicating that the large
increase of investment had a negative impact on population density at
the initial stage. However, as time went by, the indirect driving effect of
investment amount on NPP from 2008 to 2015 showed a positive effect.
The above studies indicated that the early huge investment in forestry
did not lead to a rapid increase in population to some extent. With time
went by, the appropriate increase in population resulting from forestry
investment could indirectly promote ecological restoration because of
the enhancement of human environmental protection consciousness
and technology.

7
C. Wang, et al. Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939

Table 3 should appropriately adopt staggered interference of different forest

Results of multi–level model in different periods of 2001–2008, 2008–2015 and types and staged forests restoration to increase the complexity of the
2001–2015. forest ecosystem, finally increase its spatial agglomeration and the
Variables Phrase 1 Phrase2 Phrase 3 sustainability of the forest ecosystem. To further explore the local
(2001–2008) (2008–2015) (2001–2015) spatial agglomeration trends of the forest ecosystem, this study also
analyzed the local spatial correlation index in different time series. The
Intercept 5035.47* 7274.30 3436.84***
studies found that the ecological risk regions (including L–L and H–L
Level 1(grid) lfm 0.39 0.20 0.37
veg 65.94** 39.54* 63.30** cluster types) accounted for 27.56% and 28.21% of the total area
year −2.23** −3.45 −2.55 * during the period of 2001–2008 and 2008–2015, respectively, mainly
pre 11.77*** 11.44*** 17.58*** distributed in the northern and western parts of Zhangguangcai
ssd −0.23 −0.24* −0.48**
Mountain. It is suggested that the forestry department should
Level 2 d2highw −2.89*** −2.52*** −2.24***
(watershed) d2portc 0.45* 0.24 0.52**
strengthen the monitoring and protection of existing forest resources,
irshr 0.03 −0.82** −1.07*** scientifically tend new forests species in ecological risk regions by
sand 6.32*** 4.65*** 6.15*** combining natural restoration with artificial restoration during the
slope −0.09*** −0.07** −0.06*** process of construction and management of the forest ecosystem in the
soil_org −48.44*** −28.57*** −36.62***
future.
splain −3.52** −1.88* −1.61
strick −2.61*** −0.78 −2.03***
gdp −0.72 −0.05** −0.04** 5.2. Discussion and suggestion according to the driving mechanism of the
pop 0.72 0.02 0.10*** forest ecosystem changes
Level 3(county) invest 0.24 2.00* 0.00***
Interaction
lfm invest–gdp 0.02*** 0.0 0.00***
In view of the problems existing in the forest ecosystem in the study
invest–pop 0.01*** −0.10*** 0.01*** area, it is critical to accurately explore the multi–level driving factors of
veg invest–gdp −0.18*** 0.32*** 0.25*** the forest ecosystem changes and the way they change over time at
invest–pop −0.15*** 0.12 0.02*** different scales. At the grid scale, this study found that the driving
Variance
factors, e.g., precipitation and vegetation coverage, could significantly
components
at the watershed 36.14% 35.86% 36.41% promote the restoration of the ecological environment in the study area.
scale However, the sunshine hours had a certain inhibitory effect on the
at the county scale 32.99% 33.88% 32.79% ecological restorations. This is mainly affected by the northeast tem-
perate monsoon climate and its unique geography condition limit. Once
Note: *p<0.1, **p<0.05, ***p<0.01.
the optimum sunshine hours of vegetation growth mainly located in the
Changbai Mountains is exceeded, which will be adversely affected
5. Conclusions and discussion
(Betts et al., 2004). Wang et al. (2013) also found that among climate
factors, sunshine hours had a negative impact on the ecological en-
5.1. Ecological optimization based on spatio–temporal distribution and
vironment to some extent. In order to reduce the negative impact of
spatial agglomeration in the study area
climate change on forest resources, it is suggested that the government
should pay more attention to the protection of the coniferous forests
As is well known, Northeast China is an ecologically fragile region,
and mixed coniferous broad–leaved forest by constructing agricultural
it is urgent and essential to identify and strengthen the management of
and forestry protection system to slow down the destruction of forest
the fragile ecological environment in the study area, which is conducive
ecosystem by natural and human factors. At the county scale, the in-
to the construction of regional ecological civilization and socio–-
crease in the investment could affect the mode and intensity of ecolo-
economic sustainable development. This study indicated that the NPP
gical restoration. In the future studies, the amount of investment in
showed a gradual decline trend from southeast to northwest as a whole
forestry should be more fully utilized to reform and adjust the mode of
during the period of 2001–2015. In addition, during the implementa-
forests utilization and development to realize the innovation of forestry
tion period of returning farmland to forests project in the first phase
science and technology and the improvement of forestry productivity.
(2001–2008) and the second phase (2008–2015), the area with the
This study on the driving mechanism of the forest ecosystem at the
low–value NPP (0–500 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1) distributed in the northwest and
watershed scale is not only helpful to understand the internal me-
northeast of the study area shifted to that with the middle–value NPP
chanism of the forest ecosystem change, but also can provide theore-
(500–700 gC⋅m−2⋅a−1), with an increasing rate of 24.18% in the
tical and methodological support for the response mechanism of NPP in
middle–value area. However, the NPP still showed a slight downward
other regions. The studies showed that those factors, e.g., soil organic
trend in general during this period. This may be due to a series of
matter content, distance to the highway, irrigation rate, percentage of
reasons. For example, the land degradation, deforestation, soil erosion
the disaster area, sand content, had also noticeable impact on the
and forest fire in the early stage can result in serious damage to the
growth and distribution of plants. Especially, the influence of soil or-
original the forest ecosystem in the study area, so it will be difficult to
ganic matter content and sand content were more serious. Therefore, it
restore the ecological environment as soon as possible even if with the
is suggested that the influence of soil nutrients on the regional the forest
implementation of ecological engineering. Therefore, the government
ecosystem should be paid more attention in the future. Simultaneously,
should pay more attention to the ecological restoration of low–value
it is necessary to control the possible negative influence of sewage ir-
areas on the premise of the combination of sub–regional and compre-
rigation and sewage land treatment system on the soil environment.
hensive governance.
According to the previous researches (e.g., Wang and Li et al., 2019;
From the perspective of spatial agglomeration, the global spatial
Zhang et al., 2019), the precipitous economic decline in Northeast
autocorrelation index during the period of 2001–2008 and 2008–2015
China has become a hot issue of public concern since 2015. The state of
was all above 0.8, but the index in the latter period was slightly lower
natural resources and environment is the carrier of economic devel-
than the former one, indicating that the spatial agglomeration of eco-
opment, therefore, how to ensure the socio–economic ecological sus-
logical environment in the study area decreased with the time going. It
tainable development has become the key research direction of the
is suggested that the under–forest economy should be carried out under
forest ecosystem. This study showed that the population density and
the condition of considering their specific natural properties in the re-
GDP had opposite driving effects on forest ecosystem. As for the po-
gion with low spatial agglomeration. In addition, the government
pulation density, it played a positive role in promoting the ecological

8
C. Wang, et al.
environment in the study area. In contrast, the overall impact of GDP on
forest ecosystem from 2001 to 2015 had a certain inhibitory effect
(p<0.05), which to a certain extent indicated that the socio–economic
development ultimately led to the decline of the forest ecosystem.
Therefore, on the premise of ensuring the steady progress of forest
ecological projects, it is necessary to reduce the loss of resources so as to
reduce the adverse impact of economic development on the ecological
environment.
5.3. Uncertainties and management implications
In this study, the HLM was used to analyze the multi–level driving
mechanism of NPP changes in Changbai Mountains in Northeast China.
It not only fully considered multiple driving factors from multiple di-
mensions, but also conducted interactive analysis of driving factors at
multiple scales from different time series. However, the uncertainties
still existed in the analysis on the driving mechanisms of the forest
ecosystem changes in the study area (Quillet et al., 2010). Firstly, the
NPP was affected by various potential variables. Besides the internal
competition, self–regulation and adaptation process of different forest
types in the forest ecosystem also had an impact on the climate system,
which finally affected the vegetation cover changes. However, it was
difficult to take the self–regulation and adaptation of different forest
types in the existing evaluation models into account. Secondly, the
forest ecosystem is highly complex, nonlinear and heterogeneous, and
unequal in spatial scale. Moreover, changes of the forest ecosystem
usually last for long periods, ranging from 100 to 1000 years. However,
this study only explored the ecological environment evolution trend of
forest with a short time series, which increased the uncertainty of si-
mulation and prediction of the HLM. Finally, the change of forest
ecosystem in Changbai Mountains in Northeast China was influenced by
natural and human factors. However, as some factors driving the
change of the forest ecosystem were difficult to obtain, this study only
explored the influence of the representative potential driving factors. In
future studies, how to obtain and consider more detailed potential
variables, e.g., desertification expansion variables, and analyze their
impact on ecological environment change will also become crucial.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Chunli Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data
curation, Visualization, Writing - original draft. Qun'ou Jiang:
Methodology, Data curation, Conceptualization, Writing - review &
editing, Supervision. Bernard Engel: Writing - review & editing,
Supervision. Johann Alexander Vera Mercado: Software,
Investigation, Writing - review & editing. Zhonghui Zhang:
Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Key Project of National Key
Research and Development Plan (No. 2017YFC050400103), National
Science and Technology Projects (No. 2017ZX07101004 and
2017ZX07108002), the Major Research Plan of National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41901234 and 51909052), the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
(No.2015ZCQSB03) and the Project of the Youth Top Talents Program
of Colleges in Hebei Province (BJ2018117). Data supports from projects
of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71225005)
and the Exploratory Forefront Project for the Strategic Science Plan in
IGSNRR, CAS are also appreciated. In addition, we gratefully ac-
knowledge the Beijing Municipal Education Commission for their fi-
nancial support through Innovative Transdisciplinary Program
"Ecological Restoration Engineering".
9
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2020.119939.
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 153 (2020) 119939
Chunli Wang Chunli Wang is a graduate student from School of Soil and Water
Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, majoring in catography and geographic in-
formation systems. Her research interests are ecological environment assessment and land
use simulation. She published a paper during the master's degree in the journal of Science
of the Total Environment titled “Ecological Environment Assessment Based on Land Use
Simulation: A Case Study in Heihe River Basin”.
Qunou Jiang Qunou Jiang is a Professor of catography and geographic information
systems, Beijing Forestry University. Her research interest are mainly the effects of land
use change and so on. She received her B.S. and M.S. in catography and geographic in-
formation systems from Central South University, and her Ph.D. in natural resources from
the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
She has been a visiting scholar of Australian National University for one year. She has
won the third prize in the competition of basic teaching skills for young teachers, the
excellent tutor for undergraduate students of Beijing Forestry University, and the second
prize of science and technology progress of the ministry of land and resources.
Bernard Engel Bernard A. Engel is a Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
and Associate Dean of Agricultural Research and Graduate Education. Bernie received his
B.S. and M.S. from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. from Purdue. His research
interests are Soil and Water Engineering with a focus on hydrologic or water quality
model development and application. In addition, he develops readily used environmental
decision support tools. These application areas are supported with research in fields of
GIS, remote sensing, optimization, and artificial intelligence. He is a Fellow of the
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) and recipient of the
ASABE Gilley Academic Leadership Award.
Johann Alexander Vera Mercado Johann Alexander Vera Mercado is a Ph.D. student of
Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Purdue University. He received his B.S. in Civil
Engineering from University of Cauca, M.B.A. from Saint Thomas University, M.S. in
Agricultural and Biological Engineering from Purdue University. His research interests
are Soil and Water Engineering with a focus on hydrologic or water quality model de-
velopment and application.
Zhonghui Zhang Zhonghui Zhang is a professor of the Jilin Provincial Academy of
Forestry Sciences. He received his B.S from the College of Forest Resources and
Environment of Northeast Forestry University. His research interests are Forest Ecology
and Forest Management with a focus on the restoration of degraded forest ecosystems.