Realizing the value of grassland resource assets is a critical initiative to harmonize ecological conservation with economic development, fostering sustainable coexistence between humans and grasslands. As an advanced productive force aligned with the future-oriented protection and utilization of grassland resources, new quality productive forces provide essential theoretical and practical foundations for this process. This study employs literature analysis, inductive reasoning, and case study methodologies to systematically elucidate the fundamental logic, operational mechanisms, and key pathways through which new quality productive forces empower the value realization of grassland resource assets. The findings demonstrate that: (1) The three core components of new quality productive forces—new technologies, new factors, and new industries—deliver scientific impetus, diversified strategies, and sustainable safeguards for value realization. (2) Practical challenges in this process are characterized by a tripartite dilemma: low technological conversion rates and gaps in cutting-edge technologies, insufficient participation of new-type factors and barriers to factor integration, and outdated industrial structures with low production efficiency. (3) Critical implementation pathways include: building specialized research teams, addressing technological deficiencies, and establishing industry-academia collaboration platforms; integrating production factors and developing multi-dimensional value systems; modernizing industrial structures, transforming production modes, and optimizing organizational management. This research provides both theoretical guidance and practical frameworks for the scientific management and value realization of grassland resource assets, contributing to the synergistic advancement of ecological civilization construction and socio-economic prosperity in pastoral regions.

The grass-livestock balance system plays an important role in suppressing overloaded grazing and protecting grassland ecology, but it has not fully resolved severe grass-livestock conflicts and grassland degradation in certain regions. Our structural-functional analysis of China's grass-livestock balance system reveals both positive and negative outcomes. Positively, the system has effectively protected grassland ecology and clarified powers, rights, and responsibilities of relevant entities through legal means. Negatively, it has restricted grazing practices, curbed herders' rights, reduced their income, and dampened their motivation to comply, thereby creating negative incentives. An examination of cause and effect shows that the causes lie in the external structural obstacles of the broken normative structure of the grass-livestock balance system and the irrational configuration of the institutional structure, the internal structural obstacles of the excessively long authorization cycle, the imbalance between constraints and incentives, and the limitations of the supervision and monitoring system, as well as the internal and external structural obstacles of the mixing of rewards and subsidies, which inhibit the motivation of the herdsmen. In view of this, the grass-livestock balance system should be improved in conjunction with the prohibition of grazing, rotational grazing, pasture rest, and shelter-feeding, and the incentive, constraint, and livestock-carrying capacity approvals and supervision and monitoring systems should be perfected, so as to establish a reasonable interface between the grass-livestock balance subsidy and the realization of the value of grassland ecological products.

Assessing the effectiveness of subsidies, supervision, and their combined instrument is critical for optimizing grassland eco-compensation policies. However, existing studies face methodological constraints in disentangling these three instruments due to contextual limitations. Leveraging the unique identity of grassland transfer-in herders, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment using field survey data from 885 herders in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. We employ Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to isolate the independent and synergistic effects of subsidies and supervision on grassland use pressure. Attempts are made to rigorously disentangle causal relationships of policy effects within complex social-ecological systems. Key findings reveal that: Firstly, subsidy instrument reduces grassland use pressure by 2.5299 sheep units per hm², equivalent to a 77.13% decrease in overgrazing severity. Secondly, supervision instrument decreases grassland use pressure by 1.8866 sheep units per hm², reducing overgrazing degree by 60.28%. Thirdly, synergistic effects lower grassland use pressure by 2.1791 sheep units per hm², diminishing overgrazing degree by 66.44%. These results demonstrate that economic incentives outperform supervision constraints, while synergistic effects exceed supervision instrument but remain weaker than subsidy instrument. Finally, the effects of subsidies, supervision and synergy on grassland use pressure reduction are more significant in small grassland scale herders, and the effect decreases in the order of synergy, subsidies and supervision. With different livelihood strategies, subsidies, supervision and synergy are all conducive to grassland use pressure, but synergy and supervision are more effective in non-grazing employment herders, while subsidies have little difference in grassland use pressure between the two groups. Future efforts should respect the phased law of policy implementation, enhance subsidy precision, improve supervision mechanisms and tools, and foster synergistic linkage between subsidies and supervision to achieve policy synergy.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 emphasize the win-win of enhancing agricultural output and promoting the sustainable development of grasslands, propelling research on the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems into a new phase. This article reviews the relevant research trajectory and constructs a conceptual framework for the displacement processes and effects of agricultural and grassland systems within a region. On this basis, it organizes the displacement relationships between agricultural land and grassland systems under different scenarios, analyzes the displacement pathways that achieve a win-win situation for both production and ecology, and summarizes existing win-win models. It also explores the challenges and pathways for future model upgrades. The study finds that, from the perspective of the impact of agricultural land expansion on grassland systems, the entire agricultural system structure includes three subsystems—terrain, plants, and animals—and two fundamental interfaces connecting these subsystems. When the free potential energy of the agricultural land system accumulates to a certain extent, expansion behavior occurs. This leads to geographical spatial displacement with the grassland system and generates a series of impact effects on each subsystem and connecting interface: (1) When agricultural land undergoes inappropriate expansion, its systemic relationship with grassland becomes destructive, characterized by competition and annexation. This is primarily manifested as ecological niche deviation and over-expansion, leading to significant negative impacts. (2) When the expansion parameter of agricultural land is appropriately set, a relationship characterized by differentiation, catalysis, and multi-stability emerges between the agricultural and grassland systems. This leads to complementary spatial functions and matched potential energy, which drives displacement coupling and ultimately achieves a win-win outcome. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the global expansion of agricultural land has been continuing. Most countries have recognized the effects of system displacement and have successively introduced policies and legislation to achieve positive effects and avoid or reverse negative effects. At this stage, some countries have developed coupled win-win models, including mixed cropping, integrated crop and livestock systems, but these models face issues such as small scale, few participants, and limited content, remaining in the early stages of development. Reaching a mature stage still presents practical challenges in policy and management, technology and application, resources and security, and coupling and practice. The future goal is to construct a multi-dimensional, multi-scale, multi-model, and multi-agent coupled grassland-agricultural land displacement system, achieving a global win-win scenario. This can be realized through breakthroughs in policy control, spatial collaboration, technology upgrade/sharing, and multi-stakeholder cooperation, all guided by system coupling theory.

In arid and semi-arid pastoral areas, pastoralism is the most sustainable agro-food system. However, the current grassland degradation caused by overgrazing and climate change has threatened livestock production and herders' livelihood. Exploring the impact and mechanism of land titling on the technical efficiency (TE) of herders can help curb grassland degradation and improve herder livelihoods with institutional arrangements. Based on three periods of panel data of 2014, 2017 and 2020 from field interviews with 299 herder households collected in five sumus and towns in Urad Middle Banner, Inner Mongolia, this study used Stochastic Frontier Analysis to examine the impact of the new round of grassland titling on TE, and explored the impact mechanism using Binary Choice Model and Two-way Fixed Effects Model. The TE analysis showed that titling was associated with higher technical efficiency, as shown by a 0.367 higher mean TE value for confirmed herders compared to unconfirmed ones. The influencing mechanism mainly manifested as direct incentive effect and grassland transfer effect, while the labor migration effect was not significant, i.e., grassland titling could improve TE by motivating herders to adopt more proactive attitudes towards utilizing and transferring grasslands rather than by promoting them to work outside. The study was expected to extend the application of land property rights theory to grassland resource management, thereby providing a theoretical basis for promoting grassland titling in other pastoral areas and a practical reference for enhancing herder efficiency and conserving natural capital through improved institutional arrangements.

Located in inland Northwest China, the Hexi region has a typical arid and semi-arid climate and serves as a vital node in the Belt and Road Initiative. In recent years, global changes and human activities had impacted the sustainable development of both the regional ecosystem and the socio-economy. Grasslands play an important role in sustaining socio-economic development and ecological balance in arid and semi-arid zones, which are essential for providing critical ecosystem services such as water and soil conservation, windbreak and sand fixation, and biodiversity conservation. Grassland coverage serves as a key indicator of regional ecological health. Investigating the spatiotemporal patterns and response mechanisms of grassland coverage in the Hexi region holds significant importance for maintaining ecological balance and regulating regional climate. This study utilized MODIS NDVI time-series data and meteorological records from 2001 to 2022 to conduct multi-scale spatiotemporal analyses of grassland coverage dynamics and their climatic responses. An XGBoost model integrated with CMIP6 dataset was further employed to simulate grassland coverage trends from 2023 to 2050 under different scenarios in the Hexi region. The results showed that: (1) Grassland coverage in the study area showed an overall increasing trend with stable fluctuations. The spatial distribution of grassland coverage exhibited distinct spatial heterogeneity, presenting a pattern of "higher in the southeast and lower in the northwest". Approximately 57.22% of grasslands demonstrated significant improvement, though the sustainability of this trend remains uncertain. (2) Grassland coverage responded differentially to climatic factors, with precipitation showing the highest correlation coefficient. Grasslands in the northwest part of the region were notably influenced by soil moisture. Climate change (CC) and human activities (HA) contributed 27.88% and 72.12% to coverage changes, respectively, indicating HA as the dominant driver. (3) By 2050, annual average grassland coverage is projected to increase under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 scenarios but decrease under SSP1-1.9. The SSP2-4.5 scenario is deemed more conducive to grassland development in the Hexi region. These findings provide a scientific basis for ecological restoration and sustainable development in this region. Future research should integrate high-resolution land use data with long-term ecological monitoring to explore the complex response of grassland ecosystems to climate change and human activities. Furthermore, comprehensive assessments of grassland ecosystem services and values should be strengthened. Coupled with long-term field surveys and monitoring in vegetation-sparse and degraded areas, this work will provide critical decision-making support for ecological management and the sustainable use of resources in the Hexi region. The results also help us to scientifically understand the response and feedback between vegetation changes and global change in various natural and human environments.

China's Digital Village Strategy is entering a new phase of comprehensive acceleration. Digital technologies are now deeply integrated into all facets of pastoral systems, from livestock development and herdsmen production to livelihoods and the overall transformation of pastoral areas. Against the macro-backdrop of grassland livestock reduction policies, this paper develops a game payoff matrix from the dual-game perspective of government-herdsmen interactions. This approach facilitates a mathematical analysis of the mechanisms through which digital technology enhances the quality of herd reduction practices. Simultaneously, OLS regression combined with Generalized Propensity Score Matching (GPSM) is applied to survey data from herders in the Ili region of Xinjiang. These methods empirically examine the mechanisms through which digital technology affects livestock reduction quality. The baseline regression results indicate that digital technologies significantly improve the quality of livestock reduction. This improvement is manifested in high efficiency, environmental friendliness, rational regulation, and effective supervision. The GPSM estimation results demonstrate a significant positive effect of digital technology usage intensity on livestock reduction quality, revealing an increasing marginal benefit trend. Mechanism analysis reveals that emotional social networks play a mediating role in the pathway through which digital technologies affect the quality of livestock reduction, while functional social networks do not exhibit a significant influence. Local governments should strengthen cooperative and mutually beneficial relations with herdsmen, thereby promoting the deeper integration and sustainable development of digital technologies in the livestock sector.