Impacts of Land Use Intensity on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study in Harbin City, China

Abstract

Land use intensity (LUI) is an important indicator for assessing human activities, and quantitatively studying the impact of LUI on ESs can help to realize the scientific management of urban ecosystems as well as sustainable development. In this study, we quantified five important ecosystem service bundles in the study area with the aid of the R-language “kohonen” package and used bivariate spatial autocorrelation modeling to examine the effects of LUI on the ESs in Harbin City from 2000 to 2020. These ESs include food supply (FP), water conservation (WC), soil conservation (SC), carbon storage (CS), water purification (WP), and habitat quality (HQ). The results show the following: (1) The LUI in Harbin City had a trend from 2000 to 2020 of “decreasing and then growing”, with a spatial distribution pattern of “high in the west and low in the east.” (2) Except for FP, all other ESs exhibit a similar spatial pattern of “west-low-east-high”; WC and WP exhibit a trend of continuous increase, SC exhibits a trend of decreasing and then increasing, and CS and HQ are generally more stable, with less fluctuation. The built-up area is situated in the high-value area of LUI, and the area exhibits a significant expansion trend. (3) Ecological conservation bundles, FP–WP synergistic bundles, ecological transition bundles, CS–WP–HQ synergistic bundles, and FP bundles are the five ecosystem service bundles that were discovered in Harbin. (4) From 2000 to 2020, there is a predominately “low LUI-high ESs” and “high LUI-low ESs” aggregation type, with a substantial positive correlation between LUI and FP and a significant negative correlation between LUI and other ESs. Harbin City should strengthen the management of ESs in the western part of the city and, at the same time, maintain the favorable ecological conditions in the ecological barriers of Zhangguangcai Range and Xiaoxing’an Mountains.