Whereas most contemporary frameworks evaluating land management aspects focus on institutional settings at a national level, the 8R framework of responsible land management aims at evaluating individual land management projects or interventions. This 8R framework is, however, still under development and needs testing, validation and further detailing, such that specific operational characteristics and internal and external effects can be included in the evaluation.

Land use transition and its eco-environmental effects are important research topics. Its essence is the process that human activities exert interference to the ecological environment in the process of social and economic development, and the ecosystem resists interference and recovers and adapts to interference. The article starts from the transition of land use dominant morphology and takes ecological resilience as the breakthrough point.

The Qilian Mountains (QMs), located in the northeast part of the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau in China, have a fragile ecological environment, complex and sensitive climate, and diverse land-cover types. It plays an important role in the “Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau Ecological Barrier” and “Northern Sand Control Belt” in China’s “two screens and three belts” ecological security strategy.