Abstract
The Nenjiang River Basin is an important foodstuff base and eco-environmental fragile area in Northeast China. With the rapid rise in human population, human-induced changes in land use/land cover form an important component of regional environment and ecosystem service change. At the local and regional level, the ecosystem service concept can act as a decision support tool for a stakeholder to reach sustainable land use management. However, the prevailing ecosystem service evaluation would produce a biggish warp when it is applied to concrete area. So, it is essential to evaluate ecosystem service change according to the local actuality. According to 1:250,000 land use/land cover maps of China and the adjusted equivalent value per unit area of ecosystem services in the Nenjiang River Basin, we evaluated the ecosystem service change of the river basin from 1980 to 2005. The forest and wetland, which are mainly located in the upstream mountainous area of the Nenjiang River Basin, were the two valuable land cover types, accounting for more than three quarters of the total ecosystem service value of the river basin. As for individual ecosystem service, besides the food production, all of the ecosystem service values declined from 1980 to 2005. The total decline of 2.43 billion USD was mainly due to the cultivation of grassland (14.34 % of the area in 1980) and wetland (4.62 % of the area in 1980) in the downstream plain. Due to the increase in population and the concomitant requirement of grain, the inconsistency between decision-making at the macro-level, and the objective of agricultural production at the micro-level, cultivated land was increased through zealous reclamation of grassland, marginal woodland, and even fallow land. Tremendous land use/land cover changes had caused great damages to the ecological environment such as land degradation and ecosystem service recession. So, the policies of the Grain for Green and Construction of Ecological Province projects should be well-implemented to optimize land use/land cover.
Highlights
The Nenjiang River Basin is an important foodstuff base and eco-environmental fragile area in Northeast China
According to 1:250,000 land use/land cover maps of China and the adjusted equivalent value per unit area of ecosystem services in the Nenjiang River Basin, we evaluated the ecosystem service change of the river basin from 1980 to 2005
The forest and wetland, which are mainly located in the upstream mountainous area of the Nenjiang River Basin, were the two valuable land cover types, accounting for more than three quarters of the total ecosystem service value of the river basin
Summary
The Nenjiang River Basin is an important foodstuff base and eco-environmental fragile area in Northeast China. At the local and regional level, the ecosystem service concept can act as a decision support tool for a stakeholder to reach sustainable land use management. Wang et al Ecological Processes (2015) 4:11 local and regional level, the ecosystem service concept can act as a decision support tool for a stakeholder to reach sustainable land use management (Anna and Sabine 2011). In China, the ecosystem service values of large-scale basins all have been evaluated (Liu et al 2006; Wu et al 2009; Hou et al 2013; Bai et al 2011; Liu et al 2014). On the basis of land use/land cover changes and the achievements of other researchers from 1980 to 2005, the ecosystem service value of the Nenjiang River Basin was evaluated through the equivalent value per unit area of Chinese terrestrial ecosystem and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). We hope to achieve three objectives: (1) to reveal the dynamics of land use/ land cover changes in the Nenjiang River Basin and its driving forces, (2) to evaluate the ecosystem service change of the river basin from 1980 to 2005, and (3) to map the ecosystem services of the Nenjiang River Basin
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