Interrelationships between Urbanization and Ecosystem Services in the Urban Agglomeration around Poyang Lake and Its Zoning Management at an Integrated Multi-Scale

Abstract

The detrimental effects of accelerated urbanization on ecosystem services underscore the necessity of investigating the interactive coercion between the two. This paper employs multi-source data to analyze the urbanization subsystems and modified equivalent factors in order to calculate the urbanization level (UL) and ecosystem service value (ESV) of the Poyang Lake urban agglomeration (PYLUA) from 2005 to 2020 at the administrative, watershed, and grid scales. Bivariate spatial autocorrelation, multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR), and others are applied to explore the interrelationships and impact effects between the two and to conduct zoning management studies. The results indicate that (1) the UL has significantly increased from 2005 to 2020, with a marginal expansion in its spatial distribution, while the ESV shows a generally smooth trend, with high-value and low-value areas present around Poyang Lake and in the metropolitan area, respectively; (2) the UL and ESV are negatively correlated at all the scales, and this negative effect has increased significantly over time; (3) in the OLS model, only land urbanization and population urbanization negatively affect the ESV at the 1% level of significance, while in the MGWR, all the urbanization subsystems negatively affect the ESV at the 1% level of significance and have their own optimal scales; and (4) the UL and ESV are interrelated and divide the PYLUA into five zones: Coordinated Development Zone, Co-Loss Zone, Development Lag Zone, Ecological Loss Zone and Development Potential Zone. These zones identify areas where negative effects are more pronounced and propose corresponding management strategies for each subzone. These results can serve as a foundation for coordinating regional urbanization and preserving the environment.