LAUSR

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), also called the Third Pole, is the largest high-elevation region with an area of 2.5 million km2 and an average elevation of about 4000m, mainly including Tibet, Qinghai, and the north-west of Sichuan. Alpine grasslands, such as alpine meadows, alpine steppes, and alpine desert steppes, are the dominant biomes on the QTP. It is also a key source for several major Asian rivers and supplies essential materials and ecosystem services (e.g., water, food) to over a billion people downstream (Immerzeel et al., 2020). Grassland is the most common ecosystem, occupying more than 60% of the QTP (Dong and Sherman, 2015), and plays a critical role in regional ecological security and economic development (Sun et al., 2021). However, climate change and anthropogenic activities, such as overgrazing, resulted in widespread and intensive grassland degradation (Dong et al., 2020), affecting regional sustainability. The Chinese government has supported an integrated portfolio of large-scale grassland ecological restoration programs since 2000. Among them are ecological engineering, protected areas (PAs), and other forms to support local communities through ecological compensation and ecological migration (i.e., transferring scattered residents from ecologically vulnerable areas and allocating them in towns to reduce human pressure and protect the degraded ecosystems). These actions improved regional environmental status and promoted multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), while several adverse consequences also occurred, including biodiversity threat and water resources crisis. The Chinese government is planning a new round of ecological restoration on the QTP. For instance, the national master plan for major projects to protect and restore the ecosystem (2021– 2035) has been released, and the ecological issues of QTP are on top of priorities. Therefore, it is necessary to identify some key characteristics and potential gaps of existing ecological programs. Here, we reviewed these ecological protection and construction schemes conducted in QTP and proposed potential implications for grassland ecosystem restoration. This synthesis aimed to help and improve future grassland restoration programs or policies on QTP and provide guidance and experiences for other regions that seek to tackle similar issues.