Pathway and Driving Forces to Complete Forest Transition in Inner Mongolia

China has experienced extensive forest transition. The biophysical conditions and socio-economic effects in different regions are quite different in such a large country. However, few studies have paid attention to local dynamics to understand how forest transition has taken place at the local level and the process of forest transition in quality. This study uses the statistics from 1980 to 2018 to analyze the forest transition in Inner Mongolia from the dual perspectives of forest quantity and quality. The Radial Basis Function Neural Network (RBFNN) modeling combines the sensitivity analysis method to comprehensively analyze the socio-economic factors driving Inner Mongolia's forest transition. The results show that the changing trend of the forest area in Inner Mongolia shaped "N" curve, while the standing forest stock showed a general slow-growing trend. Inner Mongolia achieved a complete forest transition around 1993. The forest transition in Inner Mongolia mainly obeys two typical pathways, namely the "economic development pathway" and the "national forest policy pathway." The results suggest that the ecological construction, rather than spatial expansion of the forest area, should be stressed in the future to improve forest quality