Abstract
The Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin are the two most important watersheds in China, which consist of several key ecological function areas and are crucial in terms of economic contributions. The evaluation of the ecosystem service value and the quantitative acquisition of the regional ecological quality status are necessary for supporting the ecological protection and high-quality development of the two basins. By considering basic data and adopting different ecological function models, this study was carried out to evaluate the value of ecosystem services in the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin from 2015 to 2018 in terms of provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services. Additionally, analysis was conducted in combination with economic indicators. The results showed that there were great differences in the ecosystem patterns between the Yellow River Basin, where grassland accounted for 45% of land use, and the Yangtze River Basin, where forest accounted for 39% of land use. The values of the ecosystem services of the two basins had similar spatial distributions, with higher values upstream (west) followed by downstream (east) and lower values in the middle (central China). The total annual ecosystem value of the Yangtze River Basin was more than three times that of the Yellow River Basin. In addition, the ecosystem services value of most counties in both basins was higher than their GDP, and there was a positive trend of transforming ecological benefits into economic benefits in the Yangtze River Basin. This research provides a methodology for evaluating ecosystem valuation. The results are helpful for formulating and implementing eco-compensation and payments for ecosystem service policies among different regions in the basins, and the results lay a foundation for the spatial planning and high-quality development paths of key basin areas in China.
Highlights
The ecosystem is a dynamic, complicated, and interactive functional unit composed of flora, fauna, microbial flora, and abiotic environments, from which human beings acquire various goods and services either directly or indirectly
The evaluation of ecosystem service value requires a reasonable definition of the types and structures of ecosystem services
This study established a framework of ecosystem service valuation for the two basins based on the results of previous researchers and considering the data availability and method feasibility, where indicators were classified into three categories—provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services (Table 1)—to evaluate the physical and monetary quantities
Summary
The ecosystem is a dynamic, complicated, and interactive functional unit composed of flora, fauna, microbial flora, and abiotic environments, from which human beings acquire various goods and services either directly or indirectly. With continual social and economic development, people are gradually demanding fewer materials but need more from the surrounding environment, such as spiritual and cultural values, which elicits an acute awareness of the capacity of the surrounding ecosystem to provide these benefits [3], thereby making it necessary to express ecosystem services quantitatively. Sustainability 2021, 13, 3822 or other model methods to value ecosystem services, it is easy to popularize and facilitate comparative analysis with economic indicators [4]. Costanza, who established and applied this theory and method as a pioneer, defined 17 types of global ecosystem services in 1997, including product provisioning, air, soil, hydrologic regulation, biological conservation, and cultural services and completed the valuation of each service based on the public’s willingness to pay (WTP) [5]. Since the research of Costanza [6] and Daily [7], the Millennium Ecosystem
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