Consequences of Spatial Heterogeneity of Forest Landscape on Ecosystem Water Conservation Service in the Yi River Watershed in Central China

Liu Liu,Ding Ding,Bian Bian

doi:10.3390/su12031170

Liu Liu, Ding Ding + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12031170

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Feb 6, 2020
Citations: 7	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Henan University, Henan Academy of Sciences

Abstract

Forest landscapes, especially their spatial heterogeneity, play a key role in sustaining the ecosystem water conservation service in a watershed. However, this domain has not been fully investigated. This study uses the Yi River watershed in central China as the study site. We calculated the water conservation amounts of different forests through the water balance method and quantified the landscape spatial heterogeneity of forests using landscape metrics. Then we ran correlation analysis to find the correlating relationship between the landscape spatial heterogeneity of forests and the ecosystem water conservation service. We finally applied a redundancy analysis to explore the respective influencing strength of the landscape compositional heterogeneity and configurational heterogeneity of forests on the water conservation service. Results indicate that: (1) The area proportion of different forests has a significant impact on the spatial distribution of the water conservation service. When mixed forest is dominant and its area proportion is much greater than that of other forests, the generation of the water conservation service can be best enhanced; (2) Changes of the landscape compositional heterogeneity and configurational heterogeneity of forests can affect the water conservation service to different degrees. In particular, the landscape spatial heterogeneity of mixed forest has the greatest impact on this ecosystem service; (3) The landscape configurational heterogeneity of deciduous broad-leaved forest and mixed forest has a greater impact on the water conservation service than the landscape compositional heterogeneity, whereas that of evergreen needle-leaved forest has the opposite effect. In general, appropriately adjusting the combination and configuration of different forests in a watershed can effectively promote the generation of the ecosystem water conservation service. This study provides a scientific basis for future forest management with a view to improving the landscape sustainability of forests.

Highlights

Forest is the most important terrestrial landscape that provides multiple ecosystem services (ESs), which include provisioning services, such as wood production; regulating services, such as climate regulation, air purification, and water conservation; cultural services, such as recreation; and supporting services, such as primary productivity [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The spatial distribution for different forests that generate and provide the water conservation service in the Yi River watershed showed a downward trend from the upper reaches to the lower reaches
Comparing the distribution of the area proportion of different forests in each sub-watershed, we found that when deciduous broad-leaved forest and mixed forest are dominant and the area occupied by mixed forest was over two times larger than that of deciduous broad-leaved forest, the capacity for providing the water conservation service was the greatest

Summary

Introduction

Forest is the most important terrestrial landscape that provides multiple ecosystem services (ESs), which include provisioning services, such as wood production; regulating services, such as climate regulation, air purification, and water conservation; cultural services, such as recreation; and supporting services, such as primary productivity [1,2,3,4,5,6]. An ecosystem water conservation service mainly reflects the roles of trees, shrubs, litter, and soil in the process of precipitation redistribution, conserving soil moisture, supplying underground water, regulating microclimates, decreasing surface dispersion, and regulating river flow [7]. It is an essential part of forest ecosystem functions. Landscape spatial heterogeneity, which includes landscape compositional heterogeneity and configurational heterogeneity, is a specific aspect of changing landscape patterns It is the foundation and driving force of ecological processes and landscape functions and has an extremely close relationship to the continuous generation and steady provision of ESs [9,12]. Research on the effects of forest landscape spatial heterogeneity on the water conservation service is still scarce [9,13,14,15]

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