Ecological management zoning based on static and dynamic matching characteristics of ecosystem services supply and demand in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area

Abstract

Clarifying the current status and variation trends of ecosystem services (ESs) supply and demand (ESSD) matching is helpful in providing comprehensive information for ecological management decisions. Most existing studies focus on the static matching between ESSD, ignoring changes in ESSD matching and whether such changes are sustainable for people's demand or not. This study firstly attempts to develop a zoning method based on static and dynamic matching of ESSD. Taking the county/district as the primary research unit, we quantified the supply and demand of six typical ESs in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) from 2000 to 2020, which included grain production (GP), vegetable production (VP), fruit production (FP), water yield (WY), carbon sequestration (CS) and water purification (WP). Further, we identified ESSD's static and dynamic matching characteristics, and formulated four matching types (ESs surplus-sustainable type (S–S), ESs surplus-unsustainable type (S-US), ESs deficit-sustainable type (D-S), and ESs deficit-unsustainable type (D-US)) as ecological management zones. The results showed that ESSD in the GBA are extremely mismatched, with an overall surplus in surrounding ecological barrier areas and a serious deficit in central core areas. For GP, VP, FP and CS, the mismatch is gradually intensified, while for WP and WY, the mismatch is gradually alleviated. The S–S type was largely reflected in GP, VP, FP and WP, the S-US type was concentrated in WY, and they all mainly distributed in the surrounding areas. Meanwhile, the D-S type was mostly reflected in CS and WP, and the D-US type was mainly occurred in the central areas. This study proposed a zoning approach based on static and dynamic matching of ESSD, which can provide more reasonable guidance for regional ecological management.