A paper coauthored by Professor Baodong Xu was recently published in Nature Sustainability, with the title of ‘China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management’. Using interdisciplinary research methods such as remote sensing, spatial analysis and policy analysis jointly, this paper reveals that the global greening area has increased by 5% from 2000 to 2017. China and India are found contributing 25% and 6.8% of the greening, respectively. These finding immediately drew attention both at home and abroad. Notably, CCTV News, the most influential news program in China, covered this study for 1 and a half minutes on February 14, 2019.

Professor Baodong Xu was interviewed by Chinese Science News on February 14. According to his introduction, by analyzing greening under different global environmental conditions, their study discover that land-use administration in non-dry and hot environment contribute more to global greening, which was previously attributed to the fertilization effect of carbon dioxide. Based on satellite data of the past two decades, China and India together account for nearly one-third of the global greening, and intensive farming is the main driver for them. China’s afforestation activities are also an important driver of new greening of forests (42%) in the world. These findings reveal that human activities should be included in the study of climate models. The practice could benefit the prediction of the Earth’s activities, thus promoting human beings to make more rational decisions in dealing with climate changes and environmental pollution.

Professor Baodong Xu’s research focuses on land use and land cover change, agricultural big data and smart agriculture. The paper published in Nature Sustainability is an outcome of his collaboration with colleagues in Boston University, Peking University, BLA Institute of Technology in India and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

Link to the paper: DOI:10.1038/s41893-019-0220-7.html