Abstract
Past years have witnessed the transformation of land use at a high frequency and a warmer and drier climate in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau region. To fully understand the spatial-temporal variation of ecosystem services against the changing global backdrop and to provide scientific ecosystem management measures for decision-making, a study was conducted to investigate the major ecosystem services: water yield, soil conservation and crop production from 1990 to 2015 in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau region. Three scenarios—climate change only, land use change only and both land use and climate change—were included in this study to analyze the response of ES to the above-mentioned global changes. The results show that (1) the total quantity of ES reduced in all the three scenarios, the annual ES change was scenarioII < scenarioIII < scenarioI and the periodical characteristics are present in this region; (2) the ES change in spatial distribution varied with different climate change patterns and land use transfer directions; (3) the ES composition of each ecosystem varied with different driving scenarios and different responses of the forest and wetland on climate change and land use changes were observed. Moreover, the trade-off under land use change and climate change respectively was observed in this study. Based on the results, we recommend that the local government take this trade-off and climate change into account when making decisions, continue with desertification control and improve the quality of grassland as well as forests—these efforts should enable us to achieve sustainable development of human beings and the natural ecosystem.
Highlights
Ecosystem service (ES) refers to the benefits people obtain from the ecosystem, including provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services [1], which constitute the basis of human survival and are closely related to the well-being of humans [2]
The scenarios were as follows: ScenarioI, climate change only, in which the impact of land use was filtered, reflecting the impact of climate change during 1990–2015 on the changes of ecosystem services; ScenarioII, only the land use change was allowed and the climate factors remain in 1990. This scenario filtered the impact of climate change, reflecting the impact of land use change during 1990–2015 on the changes of ecosystem services; ScenarioIII, for the interactions of land use and climate change, which reflect the actual changes of the ecosystem services in the studied area during the period of 1990–2015
The periodical characteristics of land use change were obvious in the studied area, from 1990 to 2000, with the increase of human disturbance to the natural ecosystem, over-cutting, reclamation and overgrazing have resulted in the increase of cultivated land and bare land and the reduction of grassland and wetland directly or indirectly
Summary
Ecosystem service (ES) refers to the benefits people obtain from the ecosystem, including provisioning services, regulating services, cultural services and supporting services [1], which constitute the basis of human survival and are closely related to the well-being of humans [2]. EacnodsyscteimtySeervxipceasnAsssioesnsm, etnht e ecosystem in the area is confronted with a series of severe challenges, such as land desertification, wetland reduction and soil erosion It faces with the trade-off between eocforneogInimorneiaccledencteodvseyecslatoedpmemss,, heeusnpmteacaninaladlycteigvnriatviseissrlaohnnadvmseaegnnrdetaaftollrypesartfofeetcceotcesdtyisotthenme [ss6t,r0wu–ch6tiuc2rh]e.parnodvisdpeaatiawl iddiestrraibnugteioonf critical regulatory and production services in the ETP region. Taking the ecological characteristics of the ETP region and its role in the national ecological security pattern of China into consideration [17], three representative and important ecosystem services including water yield, crop production, soil conservation were studied [2]. The input parameters include the average temperature, the evapotranspiration, sunshine duration, vegetation index, albedo, vegetation type, pixel latitude and longitude information, etc
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