Fig. 1. The locations of sampling points in the alpine grassland in Qinghai Province and the northern Tibetan Plateau transect

Fig. 2. The spatial pattern of multifunctionality in the alpine grassland on the Tibetan Plateau (a), and the probability density curves of the multifunctionality values in different types of grassland (b).

Fig. 3. Relationships between the multifunctionality and precipitation (a, c, e, g), and between the residuals of the multifunctionality and grazing intensity (b, d, f, h) in the four types of grassland on the northern Tibetan Plateau transect.

Fig. 4. Variations of the individual functions and the multifunctionality along with vegetation cover degradation. An abrupt decline of the multifunctionality is indicated by the grey vertical line, where the vegetation cover was decreased to about 25%, signifying the collapse of the grassland multifunctionality.