| Summary: | China's Sloping Land Conversion Programme (SLCP) improves the vegetation at the expense of a lot of water and aggravates the drought in arid and semi-arid regions. Identifying vegetation restoration types based on their ecological effectiveness is important for alleviating the conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans. This study used the treatment effect model to estimate the marginal contribution of SLCP towards vegetation restoration in the Northern Shaanxi Loess Plateau. Additionally, we built a relative advantage index (RAI) for identifying vegetation restoration types based on the assessment of SLCP's ecological effectiveness. After implementing the SLCP, land use experienced significant transitions, and the vegetation was extensively improved in the Northern Shaanxi Loess Plateau. The farmland changed into forestland and grassland extended to over 985.608 km2 and 3021.526 km2 respectively, and the average normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) increased by 35.818 % from 2000 to 2015. The SLCP has a large positive effect on vegetation, and the marginal contribution of conversion farmland to forest (CFF) is higher than that of conversion farmland to grassland (CFG). Furthermore, the RAI can effectively distinguish vegetation restoration types in forest-grass transition zones. The suitable afforestation areas with a RAI of more than 1 account for 14.101 %, and are mainly distributed in the south of the Northern Shaanxi Plateau while others are more suitable for grass-planting. The government should improve schemes to guide farmers to choose the appropriate vegetation restoration types in different areas for gaining more ecological profits.
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