The features and influential factors of interactions among ecosystem services

Abstract

Understanding the impact of climate change and human activity on the interactions among ecosystem services and associated characteristics is critical to improve ecosystem management and achieve regional sustainability. We respectively used Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach, Revised Wind Erosion Equation, and the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs (InVEST) model to evaluate the amount of net primary productivity (NPP), soil erosion by wind (SL), and soil conservation (SC), water yield (WY), and water retention (WR) from 2001 to 2014 in the Xilin Gol grassland of North China. A segmented quantile regression approach was used to extract the constraint lines, which are the upper boundaries of the scatter plots of paired ecosystem services and represent the constraint effects between them. The thresholds, slopes, and constant terms of the regression equations were used to characterize the key features of the constraint lines. Finally, we analyzed the correlation between the key features and the influential factors of climate as well as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The results showed that the patterns and the thresholds of constraint lines between ecosystem services were almost invariable with the changing of climate factors and NDVI from 2001 to 2014. However, the key features of slopes and constant terms on the constraint lines were easily impacted by the environmental factors. As precipitation is the main source of water requirements of vegetation in the arid and semiarid regions and affects the variations of NPP, SC, WY, and WR, the precipitation factors appeared to be critical to shape the constraint lines and determine the strength of constraint effects between paired ecosystem services. Understanding the changing trends of key features on the constraint lines between paired ecosystem services and their influential factors could improve the quantitative management measures of ecosystem services and promote sustainable land use planning.