Ecosystem Service Assessment of Soil and Water Conservation Based on Scenario Analysis in a Hilly Red-Soil Catchment of Southern China

Abstract

Soil and water conservation (SWC) practices on agricultural watersheds have been the most effective practices for preventing soil erosion for several decades. The ecosystem services (ES) protected or enhanced by SWC practices include the comprehensive effects of protecting and conserving water sources, protecting and improving soil, carbon fixation, increasing agricultural production, and so on. Due to the lack of ES evaluation indicators and unified calculation methods in line with regional characteristics, this study proposes a framework of scenario analysis by using ES mapping, ES scoring, and economic analysis technology for ES and economic-benefit trade-offs under different scenarios. The study area was the Xiaoyang catchment located in Ningdu County, Jiangxi Province, which is a typically hilly red-soil region of southern China. From the results of scenario analysis, an obvious phenomenon is that some SWC practices can affect the value of some ES indicators, while some have no clear trend. By computing the ES scores for the four scenarios, the ranking was S3 (balanced), S1 (conservation), S2 (economic), and S0 (baseline). S3 ranks second in net income (with CNY 4.73 million), preceded only by S2 (CNY 6.36 million). Based on the above rankings, S3 is the relatively optimal scenario in this study. The contributions of this study are the method innovation with the localization or customized selection of ES indicators, and scenario analysis with ES scores and economic-benefit trade-offs in different scenarios.