Abstract
Land use/cover change (LUCC) from increased urbanization significantly impacts regional ecosystem services. Based on a cold/hot spots analysis, this paper used grain yield, food prices, price index statistics, and a land use thematic map to study the impact of LUCC on four ecosystem services values (ESVs) in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and determine the spatial differences resulting from the rapid urbanization LUCC. The correlation between the four ecosystem services was then studied and sensitivity analyses conducted to investigate whether any changes in the ESVs could lead to unacceptable unit value transfer uncertainties. It was found that most urban land was converted from farmland, and that before 2000, the total ESVs and the regulating services values (RSVs) increased significantly, after which it declined, the provisioning services values (PSVs) declined year on year, the habitat services value (HSV) and cultural and amenity services value (CSV) declined sharply after 2000, and the spatial distribution of the four ESVs were significantly different. Over time, it was found that the hot spots were shrinking and the cold spots were spreading. The provisioning services were found to be negatively correlated with habitat services and cultural and amenity services, the regulating services were weakly positively correlated with the provisioning services and significantly positively correlated with the habitat services and cultural and amenity services, and the habitat services were significantly positively correlated with cultural and amenity services. In the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, the water area is the most important for the total ESVs, followed by non-bush forest. Paddy field is ranked third. Dryland, bush, grassland, and wetland are less important. The importance of barren land is almost zero. This research provides the government with a scientific basis from which to formulate spatial planning and environmental protection policies for ecological sustainable development in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
Highlights
LUCC (Land use/cover change) programs involve the study of land surface changes, and were inspired by the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Earth Science Program [1]
We introduced a simplified version of Aschonitis et al.’s method to establish the importance of each land use type based on its contribution to the total ecosystem services values (ESVs) [58]; the importance values were ranked: C × Ai
Analysis of the Changes in the ESVs Resulting from LUCC
Summary
LUCC (Land use/cover change) programs involve the study of land surface changes, and were inspired by the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Earth Science Program [1].As land is the most essential ecosystem element, LUCC can have a significant impact on regionalESVs (ecosystem services values) [2,3,4,5]. Land cover can change because of natural phenomena, such as weathering, glaciers, and vegetation succession; natural disasters, such as earthquakes and mudslides; and human activities [9] When these changes occur, the land can return to equilibrium; some land restoration efforts, such as recovering from desertification, can take a long time [10] and require significant resources. The ESVs has become an important indicator to assess whether a region is able to attain sustainable development [13] It has, become important to identify, quantify, and evaluate all ecosystem services changes [14], with quantitative assessments of land-use changes being the main approach [15,16]. Liang et al have developed a method, integrating ESVs to balance future ecosystem-service benefit and risk to optimize investment in land for ecological conservation in land use planning [19]
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