Supply-demand analysis of ecosystem services based on socioeconomic and climate scenarios in North China

Abstract

The demand and supply of ecosystem services (ESs) play a crucial role in the sustainable development of regional nature-society systems. With complex climate change and multiple pathways of social development, there is an urgent need for predictive research on how to combine both social and natural factors to determine the comparatively optimal regional development pathway. Based on the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs)–representative concentration pathways (RCPs) framework and the pattern-process-service-management research paradigm, this study analyzed the various trends of regional landscape patterns for 2030–2050 and predicted the state of ecosystem services supply and demand (ESSD) in 2030 under multiple scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP5-8.5) in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions. The results show that: 1) area of cropland will decrease in multiple future scenarios. There is a smaller landscape variation and an upward trend of urban area in the SSP5-8.5 scenario. The transfer types among different landscapes will be concentrated between forest and grassland under SSP1-2.6 and SSP2-4.5. 2) The average provisioning capacity of ES will increase in the future, with a spatial pattern of high in the northwest and low in the southeast. Habitat quality has the least interdistrict variation in service distribution, while the recreation service exhibits the opposite trend. 3) The average comprehensive ecological supply and demand ratio (CESDR) is higher in Beijing city than in Hebei Province and Tianjin city. The primary imbalance services are water yield, soil retention, and habitat quality in Beijing city, Hebei Province, and Tianjin city, respectively. Moreover, the SSP5-8.5 scenario has the highest number of ES deficit regions. 4)The ESSD state of each ES had an inverse relationship with the local economic level in 2020, in which water yield had the highest negative correlation degree (-0.191) and soil retention had the lowest (-0.041). In addition, the relationship between gross domestic product and CESDR will change from negative to positive along with different future scenarios (SSP1-2.6: −0.05, SSP2-4.5: 0.05, SSP5-8.5: 0.12). The study provides useful implications for policy-makers to coordinate regional resources and implement sustainable development by integrating both ecological and economic aspects.