Spatiotemporal patterns, relationships, and drivers of China’s agricultural ecosystem services from 1980 to 2010: a multiscale analysis

Abstract

During the past three decades, China’s agroecosystem has undergone dramatic alterations because of changes in climatic and management factors, which threatened agricultural sustainability. We investigated how climatic and management factors affected agricultural ecosystem services (AES). We adopted the GIS-based Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) model to simulate the five critical AES: food production, soil organic carbon (SOC), nitrate leaching, water erosion, and wind erosion from 1980 to 2010 and used a partial least square regression model to quantify the contributions of the drivers of the variation in the AES on the main grain-producing area (MGPA), climatic zone, and national scales. On the MGPA scale, SOC exhibited no obvious change and food production increased, whereas the negative environmental effects largely increased. The MGPA is important to ensure the safety of China’s food supply. At the climatic zone scale, food production and SOC increased, water erosion in the tropical-subtropical monsoonal zone and water and wind erosion in the temperate monsoonal zone decreased, whereas N leaching, water erosion, and wind erosion increased in other climate zones. At the national scale, food production, SOC, N leaching, and wind erosion increased, whereas water erosion decreased. The crop cultivated area played a major role in the effect on food production and SOC. The dominant factors for N leaching, water erosion, and wind erosion varied with crop type and study scales. Adjustment of agricultural management measures is vital and possible to minimize the tradeoffs, increase the synergies among agro ecosystem services, and promote adaptation to the changing climate.