Spatiotemporal assessment and trade-offs of multiple ecosystem services based on land use changes in Zengcheng, China

Abstract

Driven by rapid urbanization, land use change has become a significant factor influencing ecosystem services (ESs). To support the decision-making process of city planners and policy makers, assessing the spatiotemporal changes associated with multiple ESs is vital. In this study, we developed a general structure to assess the changes of multiple ESs in Zengcheng, China. A new index also was developed to measure the comprehensive ecosystem service (CES). Trade-offs of various ESs were analyzed by using correlation analysis. We then designed four alternate scenarios to explore the optimal land use strategies to increase the CES value and minimize trade-offs among various ESs. Results demonstrated that rapid expansion of built-up land and traffic land resulted in a decrease of CES in Zengcheng from 2003 to 2013. Although the water supply, water purification, and vegetable and fruit production services increased, the climate regulation, soil conservation, biodiversity protection, recreation opportunity and grain production services decreased during the ten-year period. Government should implement land use policies and ecological engineering measures to improve soil conservation in the northern region; recreation opportunity in the central region; and carbon storage, water purification, biodiversity protection and recreation opportunity in the southern region. Among all alternative scenarios, woodland buffer and soil conservation scenarios exhibit the highest CES values, indicating that policies such as the "Ecological corridor construction" project and the "Grain for Green" project should be implemented. However, a caveat is that these policies improve the ESs at the expense of food production due to significant trade-off relationships. To minimize the trade-offs, a more sustainable intensification of agriculture should be adopted to increase food production without decreasing other ESs or occupying additional land. The land use strategies and ecological engineering measures in this study can provide a reliable reference for sustainable development of other urbanized regions in China.

Assessment of the Effects of Urban Expansion on Terrestrial Carbon Storage: A Case Study in Xuzhou City, China

“…The main task in urban planning is the consideration and coordination of multiple objectives. However, the involvement of natural ESs in urban planning remains a major challenge and has received less attention in the context of realistic cities [37]. Most of the previous studies have only focused on quantifying the changes in historical ESs without linking these changes to urban planning.…”

Ecological Land Adaptive Planning in Macroscale, Mesoscale, and Microscale of Shanghai

“…To reveal the spatial distribution of ecological land and evaluate the importance level of the land in macroscale, four indicators were chosen, which are carbon sequestration service, water conservation services, habitat quality, and soil erosion. During the carbon sequestration service calculation of the InVEST model, several parameters from previous researches were chosen [17][18][19][20] and the carbon densities of different lands are listed in Table 1. Habitat quality is one of the supporting ecosystem services in InVEST.…”

Investigating the Spatiotemporally Varying Correlation between Urban Spatial Patterns and Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of Nansihu Lake Basin, China

“…C x and P x are assigned 1, if there is no vegetation or support practice for pixel x. In this study, C x and P x shown in Table 2 were determined according to the relevant literature [27]. The total amount of carbon storage in the NLB was quantified on the basis of the 4 types of carbon density (aboveground mass carbon density, belowground mass carbon density, soil organic mass carbon density and dead organic mass carbon density) and the land use maps.…”

“…The carbon density values were obtained according to previous studies and are presented in Table 3. It was assumed that carbon storage for built-up land is negligible and it was set to zero based on the study by Sun & Li (2017) [27]. Because a significant linear relationship exists between crop production and the NDVI value for agricultural land type [28], in this study, the county level statistical data on crop production were allocated to each grid of agricultural land by using the NDVI value.…”