Assessing spatial heterogeneous response of ecosystem service relationships to land use intensification

作者：Mingli Qiu, Dianfeng Liu · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2023.110721 · 被引用次数：15 · 研究领域：Land Use and Ecosystem Services、Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management、Economic and Environmental Valuation

Sustainable land use should balance the competing needs for development and protection. Land-use intensification facilitates material benefits from ecosystem, while potentially undermining the capacity of regulate the life-support environment and thus altering trade-offs between ecosystem services (ES). However, there remains a limited understanding of how land-use intensity (LUI) affects the spatial heterogeneity of ES relationships. To address this issue, we first propose an ES synergies (ESS) index, to clarify site-specific ES relationships, based on a combination of the production possibility frontier (PPF) and the technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS). Then, we assess the nonlinear impacts of LUI on ESS, using the generalized additive models (GAMs). A case study was conducted in the Three Gorges region of central China, due to the dilemma between intensive development for poverty alleviation and water-soil retention for ecological protection. The results showed that an increase in LUI caused different rates of decline in ESS. Land-use intensification increased resource inputs and anthropogenic disturbances within entire land parcels, thus disrupting the synergistic relationships between several ES. Specifically, the synergies between water retention and carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation decreased by more than three times as much as those between water retention and food production. Excessive LUI will reduce the provis...