Abstract
Unprecedented urbanization has occurred globally, which has converted substantial natural landscapes into impervious surfaces and further impacted ecosystem services and functioning. In this study, we quantified the spatiotemporal patterns of urbanization and investigated the impacts of urbanization on the ecosystem service value (ESV) in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) of China from 1980 to 2018. The results show that the GBA has experienced extensive urbanization, with the urban area increasing from 2607.4 to 8243.5 km2 from 1980 to 2018. Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Shenzhen, and Foshan exhibited the top five highest urban expansion rates. Throughout the study period, edge expansion was the most dominant growth mode, with a decreasing trend, while infilling increased in the GBA. The total ESV loss induced by urban expansion in the GBA reached 40.5 billion yuan over the past four decades. The ESV loss due to the water body decrease caused by urbanization was the largest. Our study suggests that decision-makers should control new urban areas and protect water bodies, wetlands, and forests with high ESVs to promote the sustainable development of urban agglomerations.
Highlights
Dramatic urban expansion has occurred worldwide over the last centuries
Our study suggests that decision-makers should control new urban areas and protect water bodies, wetlands, and forests with high ecosystem service value (ESV) to promote the sustainable development of urban agglomerations
We evaluated the ESV changes induced by urbanization from various perspectives in the whole Greater Bay Area (GBA), at the regional scale, and for the various land use and land cover (LULC) types, ecosystem services (ESs), and urbanization growth modes over each study period
Summary
Dramatic urban expansion has occurred worldwide over the last centuries. The global population in urban areas has increased from 30% to 54% from 1950 to 2014 and is expected to rise to approximately 70% by 2050 [1,2,3]. Increasing numbers of researchers have studied the spatial and temporal patterns of urban expansion [1,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Many researchers have paid more attention to the spatial and temporal patterns of these urban agglomerations [10,16,31], but fewer studies have simultaneously examined their consequences on ESs. It is important to analyze the ESV changes in response to human activities to promote the sustainable development of the ecological environment. The GBA is one of most developed areas in China and plays an important strategic role in the overall national development situation, but there are few studies on the influences of urbanization on its ESs. this study. Because coastal reclamation has occurred in the study area, large seawater areas have been reclaimed, and we temporarily regarded the sea as a water body when calculating the ESV
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