Land use in traditional village clustering areas often exhibits slight dynamic changes; however, significant hidden ecological hazards may be present in local settlements. There is still a lack of dynamic ecological risk assessments for the corresponding classification-based prevention strategies and landscape ecosystem attributes’ enhancement. Based on the land-use changes, this study integrated the ecosystem structure and function to explore the characteristics of the landscape ecological risk in traditional village clustering areas.

Deforestation and forest degradation mostly caused by human interventions affect the capacity of the forest ecosystem to provide ecosystem services and livelihood benefits. Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is an emerging concept that focuses on the improvement of the ecosystem as well as the livelihood of the people at the landscape level. Nepal has successfully recovered degraded forest land mainly from the hilly region through forest restoration initiatives, especially community-based forestry. However, the Tarai region is still experiencing deforestation and forest degradation.

Topsoil is required to be stripped and reused to maintain land productivity in mining and construction activities. However, as a great threat to unprotected soil, wind erosion on topsoil replacement sites has not received enough research attention, which hinders the efficient implementation of wind erosion control measures in the right time and place on a national scale. This study aims to evaluate wind erosion on unprotected topsoil replacement sites (WEUTRS) in mainland China, examining its spatiotemporal pattern and demonstrating its significance for the relevant research and industry.