Abstract
Monitoring the impact of current Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) management practices on future Ecosystem Services (ESs) provisioning has been emphasized because of the effect of such practices on ecological sustainability. We sought to model and predict the impacts of future LULC changes on subsequent changes in Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) in fragile environments undergoing complex LULC changes, Su-Xi-Chang region. After mapping and classifying the LULC for the years 1990, 2000, and 2010 using GIS and remote sensing, a Cellular Automata (CA)–Markov model was employed to model future LULC changes for the year 2020. ESV was predicted using the projected LULC data and the modified ES coefficients adopted by Xie et al. (2003). The projected results of the changes in LULC reveal that construction land expanded extensively, mainly at the expense of farmland, wetland, and water bodies. The predicted results of the ESVs indicate that water bodies and farmland are the dominant LULC categories, accounting for 90% of the total ESV. Over the study period, ESVs were diminished by 7.3915 billion CNY, mostly because of the decrease in farmland, water bodies, and wetland. A reasonable land use plan should be developed with an emphasis on controlling construction land encroachment on farmland, wetlands, and water bodies. The rules of ecological protection should be followed in LULC management to preserve ecological resources.
Highlights
Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) change is one of the fundamental concerns in global environmental change and sustainable development
For the purpose of monitoring the current LULC management practices and assessing the effects of LULC on Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) in the future, we focus on the forecasting of future LULC changes
The bolded values along the transition probability diagonal indicate the probability of a LULC type remaining unchanged from time t0 to time t (t > t0), whereas the cross-diagonal shows the probability that a given LULC undergoes a change from one category to another
Summary
Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) change is one of the fundamental concerns in global environmental change and sustainable development. It has been observed that the conversion of LULC into agricultural land and urban areas is destructive to various Ecosystem services (ESs), such as entertaining scenes [6], genetic resources and nutrient cycling [7,8,9], erosion control and climate regulation [10], and water availability and soil fertility [11] The consequences of these changes result in the degradation of ESs, which is the aggregate of ecosystem goods (such as food) and services (such as waste assimilation), that represent the benefits human populations derive, directly or indirectly, from ecosystem functions [12]. These impacts make the quantification of Ecosystem Service Values (ESVs) essential to raise awareness [13], develop decision making for the distribution of scarce resources among conflicting demands [14], incorporate ESs into the socioeconomic and marketing systems [15], formulate policy [16] and stimulate the conservation of ecosystems that deliver the most valuable services in support of human well-being [17]
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