Cooperative management reduces the trade-offs of multi-functions of the grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Climate change and anthropogenic disturbances have threatened the ecosystem functions including ecological, production and livelihood functions (EPLFs) of the alpine grassland on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). Integrating the trade-offs and synergies among the EPLFs into the regional development decision-making system is important for achieving sustainable development goals on the QTP. This study constructed an ecological-production-livelihood functions (EPLFs) index system to quantify and compare the functions of various cooperative and individual management grasslands. A comprehensive functions index (CFI), a total functions value (TF) and a trade-off index (TOI) were built to evaluate these two types of grasslands. The results indicated that production function (PF) of cooperative management grasslands were significantly higher and lower than those of individual management grasslands due to higher productive fixed assets of cooperative management grasslands. By contrast, ecological and livelihood function of cooperative and individual management grasslands did not show significant difference. In addition, the correlation between PF and CFI was also higher in cooperative management grasslands than individual management grasslands. The SEM analysis revealed that the ecological and production functions have positive direct effects on TF. Furthermore, the PF have negative direct effects on TOI. The cooperative management grasslands with higher PF can reduce TOI and enhance TF, and in turn increase the CFI, compared with individual management grasslands. The improvement of PF is critical for enhancing overall EPLFs and decreasing the trade-off of EPLFs. Therefore, we recommend that policymakers attach importance to the multi-objective optimization potential offered by cooperative management grasslands, and provide corresponding policy support to decrease trade-offs and increase synergies of EPLFs on the QTP.