Simulation of the evolution track of future Production–Living–Ecological Space under the framework of comprehensive assessment of climate change: A case study of Heilongjiang Province, China

Abstract

Climate change affects the coupling degree of water and land resources and further affects regional food security and sustainable development. Taking the water–land coupling relationship as the starting point, this study evaluated the potential impacts of climate change on the dynamic changes in land and water resources in Heilongjiang Province from the perspective of “setting land by water” by system dynamics (SD) and PLUS model. The research results show the following: (1) The wetting scenario can reduce the water stress index (WSI) by 0.37, effectively delay the reduction of ecological space of 824.63 km 2, balance the expansion of production space and living space, and realize the sustainable utilization of water and land resources cooperatively. (2) A temperature increase of 1°C will affect the increase of 55.97 billion m3 of water resources, and reduce the ecological space of 226.67 km 2. The increases in temperature and decreases in precipitation will lead to the continuous decrease of the coordination effect of water and land resources. (3) The changes in the land use of the Production–Living–Ecological (PLE) were mainly due to the enhancement of agricultural production activities, which led to the occupation of 176.6 km 2 of grassland and other ecological land. The increased use of irrigation water is the main reason for the enhanced spatial correlation between agricultural production land and water area. Our findings highlight that the overall optimization of land resources can be realized by optimizing the spatial–temporal allocation of water resources and put forward feasible suggestions to response to climate change.