Abstract
Drylands worldwide face high pressure to expand agricultural production while reversing land degradation. Whether higher production also brings more balanced ecosystem benefits remains unclear. Here, using 34 years of data from a typical dryland agro-pastoral region in northern China, we show that landscapes can have enhanced combinations of services while becoming less balanced. We measured crop production, grazing support and water purification, and used this frontier proximity as a measure of technical efficiency. Technical efficiency increases over time but balance among services declines and high efficiency-low balance areas are highly persistent over time. Wetter conditions contribute to rising efficiency, whereas service balance depends more on grassland retention, land use composition and initial conditions. An increase of 7.5% in grassland area marks the fitted crossover, where balanced outcomes became more likely than specialized ones. Dryland governance should therefore evaluate production gains together with service balance and land use structure, since rising efficiency can mask a narrowing of ecosystem service portfolios.
Subjects
- Ecosystem services
- Sustainability
Acknowledgements
We thank the editors and reviewers for their careful assessment and constructive comments, which contributed to the great improvement of the writing. We also acknowledge the providers of the public remote-sensing, climate, soil, hydrological boundary and statistical datasets used in this study.
Funding
This study was supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB1670000), the National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFF1304204, 2023YFF1304201), the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Key R&D and Achievement Transformation Project (2026YFDZ0144), the Inner Mongolia Academician Workstation for Protective Forest Program and Desertification Control, Science & Technology Fundamental Resources Investigation Program (2025FY100600, 2025FY10060405), the Fund of CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Silviculture, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (KLFES-2025), the Liaoning Provincial Science and Technology Major Project (2023JH1/10400001), the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (GZC20232880), the Project of Doctoral Research Startup Fund of Liaoning Province (2025-BS-0186) and the Youth Startup Fund of Institute of Applied Ecology Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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Peng, X., Zhan, Y., Chen, X. et al. Rising technical efficiency masks declining multifunctional balance in dryland agro‑pastoral systems.
Commun Earth Environ (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03883-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-026-03883-4
Source: Ecology - nature.com
