Unveiling spatiotemporal dynamics and factors influencing the provision of urban wetland ecosystem services using high-resolution images

Abstract

Although extensive studies have investigated changes in regional ecosystem services (ESs) under rapid urbanization, few analyses have used high-resolution image data to investigate urban wetlands. Taking the Xixi wetland region as a case area, this study aimed to investigate the temporal and spatial variation and influencing factors of typical ESs during 1984–2018 using high-resolution images. The results showed that the Xixi wetland region underwent substantial changes of land use as well as in different ESs. While carbon storage presented an increasing trend from 223.25 t/ha to 368.11 t/ha from 1984 to 2018, the changes of other services illustrated an overall degradation in this important urban wetland. Evident trade-off and synergy effects were observed between water yield and carbon storage and between biodiversity protection and recreation and cultural services. Redundancy analysis revealed the detrimental impacts of impervious cover on the provision of ESs in this urban wetland area. The results obtained in this study highlight the great challenges that urban wetland parks face in balancing wetland conservation and sustainable use.