Trade-offs and Synergies of Ecosystem Services in the Taihu Lake Basin of China

Abstract

Understanding the spatial interactions among multiple ecosystem services is crucial for ecosystem services management. Ecosystem services, including crop production, freshwater supply, aquatic production, net primary production, soil conservation, water conservation, flood regulation, forest recreation, were measured at 1-km grid scale covering the Taihu Lake Basin (TLB) of China. Our objective is to get a comprehensive understanding of the spatial distributions, trade-offs, synergies of multiple ecosystem services across the TLB. Our results found that: 1) majority of ecosystem services were clustered in space and had a similar spatial distribution pattern with the geographical resource endowment. Most of the landscape contributed a high supply of no services, one or two, and a low supply of three to seven services. 2) There were high correlation between forest recreation and freshwater supply and regulating services. Aquatic production had low correlation with other services. 3) The changes of provisioning services led to trade-offs between regulating services and cultural services in the TLB, while synergies mainly occurred among the provisioning service. 4) The spatial relationships of multiple services are consistent at 1-km spatial scale, counties and provinces. This research could help integrate multiple ecosystem services across scales and serve as a reference for decision making.