Impacts of landscape configurations on ecosystem services and their trade-offs across different landscape compositions

Abstract

Landscape sustainability depends on the design of landscape patterns that can be guided by ecosystem services (ESs). Clarifying the impacts of landscape configurations on ESs and their trade-offs will facilitate landscape planning and management to achieve the best design without changing most landscape compositions. However, limited work has focused on these impacts, and whether these impacts are the same on different compositions remains unexplored. Thus, this study analyzes the impacts of landscape configurations on ESs and their trade-offs for different compositions. In this analysis, Gaussian mixture model was used to cluster the landscape by compositions, five important ESs (crop production, water yield, carbon storage, soil retention, and outdoor recreation) were quantified, and the constraint line was used to analyze the impact, taking the Xiangjiang River Basin as an example. Results showed that three clusters of landscape compositions, which are similar to the urban–rural–natural gradient, were identified. Furthermore, the impacts of landscape configurations on ESs and their trade-offs had largely the same direction in different compositions. However, change in landscape composition makes the high correlations among them weaker or shift to constraint impacts. Based on the results of the study, we can not only contribute to local landscape development but also argue three general approaches for landscape planning and management. First, considering the trade-offs and making a choice adapted to local conditions. Second, adjusting landscape configurations with virtually no changes of compositions. Third, external intervention based on rational landscape configurations.