From "Quantity Expansion" to "Quality Enhancement": Evaluating The Effectiveness of China's Protected Areas in Protecting Ecological Quality(DataSet)

Data Sources, Detailed Citation Information: Land use/land cover data for the period 1990–2020 (Xu et al., 2018; https://doi.org/10.12078/2018070201) were obtained from the Resource and Environmental Science Data Platform (https://www.resdc.cn/). Population distribution data for the period 1990–2020 (Xu et al., 2017; https://doi.org/10.12078/2017121101) were obtained from the Resource and Environmental Science Data Platform (https://www.resdc.cn/). Night-time light data for the period 1990–2020 (Wu et al., 2021; https://doi.org/10.12041/geodata.54416522887785.ver2.db) were obtained from the National Earth System Science Data Centre (https://www.geodata.cn/). Leaf Area Index, Gross Primary Productivity , Fractional Vegetation Cover for the period 2000–2020 were obtained from the National Earth System Science Data Centre (https://www.geodata.cn/). Potential Evapotranspiration (Peng et al., 2019; https://doi.org/10.11866/db.loess.2021.001), Monthly Precipitation and Annual Precipitation for the period 2000–2020 (Peng et al., 2019; https://doi.org/10.12041/geodata.192891852410344.ver1.db) were obtained from the National Earth System Science Data Centre (https://www.geodata.cn/). Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data were obtained from the Geospatial Data Cloud Platform (https://www.gscloud.cn/). Soil Properties, Maximum Rooting Depth in Soil, and Available Water for Vegetation were derived from the Harmonized World Soil Database Version 1.2 (HWSD V1.2) (Fischer et al., 2008; https://doi.org/10.12072/ncdc.nieer.db2701.2023). Protected area boundary data were obtained from the Resource and Environmental Science Data Platform (https://www.resdc.cn/) and refined through the Geospatial Remote Sensing Ecological Network Platform (http://www.gisrs.cn/). The software used in this study includes ArcGIS 10.7 (ESRI, 2019; https://www.arcgis.net.cn/) and InVEST 3.15.1 (Natural Capital Project, 2025; https://naturalcapitalproject.stanford.edu/), both available from their official websites.