Geosci. Model Dev., 14, 1493–1510, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-1493-2021 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Using Shapley additive explanations to interpret extreme gradient boosting predictions of grassland degradation in Xilingol, China Batunacun1,2, Ralf Wieland2, Tobia Lakes1,3, and Claas Nendel2,3 1Department of Geography, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany 2Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Straße 84, 15374 Müncheberg, Germany 3Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Friedrichstraße 191, 10099 Berlin, Germany Correspondence: Batunacun (
[email protected]) Received: 25 February 2020 – Discussion started: 9 June 2020 Revised: 27 October 2020 – Accepted: 10 November 2020 – Published: 16 March 2021 Abstract. Machine learning (ML) and data-driven ap- Land-use change includes various land-use processes, such proaches are increasingly used in many research areas. Ex- as urbanisation, land degradation, water body shrinkage, and treme gradient boosting (XGBoost) is a tree boosting method surface mining, and has significant effects on ecosystem ser- that has evolved into a state-of-the-art approach for many vices and functions (Sohl and Benjamin, 2012). Grassland is ML challenges. However, it has rarely been used in sim- the major land-use type on the Mongolian Plateau; its degra- ulations of land use change so far. Xilingol, a typical re- dation was first witnessed in the 1960s. About 15 % of the gion for research on serious grassland degradation and its total grassland area was characterised as being degraded in drivers, was selected as a case study to test whether XG- the 1970s, which rose to 50 % in the mid-1980s (Kwon et Boost can provide alternative insights that conventional land- al., 2016).