We are grateful to the staff of the Desert Control Research Institute of Shannxi Province and the Xindian Gou Soil and Water Conservation Station who gave of their time and expertise.Additionally,we thank the teachers who accompanied us on the field trip to Shaanxi,who provided a lot of insights about the local area.We gratefully acknowledge fund-ing from the National Social Science Foundation of China(Grant No.23AZD062).Finally,we thank our anonymous reviewers a lot for their helpful input on the manuscript. （Grant No.23AZD062）