scholarly journals Identifying Dynamic Changes in Ecosystem Services Supply and Demand for Urban Sustainability: Insights from a Rapidly Urbanizing City in Central China

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 3428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhengxin Ji ◽  
Yueqing Xu ◽  
Hejie Wei

Identifying the balance and dynamic changes in supply and demand of ecosystem services (ES) can help maintain the sustainability of the regional ecosystem and improve human well-being. To achieve a sustainable ecological management regime in Zhengzhou City, this study presented a comprehensive framework for identifying dynamic changes of ES supply and demand and managing ES. Using land use data of Zhengzhou City in 1995, 2005, and 2015 and incorporating expert knowledge and the ES evaluation matrix, we evaluated the spatiotemporal changes in the ES supply and demand in Zhengzhou. Gradient analysis was conducted to identify urban–rural patterns in the budgets of ES supply and demand. Spatial autocorrelation analysis was employed to identify the hotspot areas of ES surpluses or deficits. The research results show the following: (1) In the past 20 years, the supply-and-demand relationship of ES in Zhengzhou has gradually evolved in a direction where supply falls short of demand. The average budget index of Zhengzhou’s ES supply and demand decreased from 7.30 in 1995 to −4.89 in 2015. Changes in the supply and demand status of ES in Zhengzhou corresponded to the background of rapid urbanization. (2) Urban–rural gradient differences exist in the budgets of ES supply and demand in Zhengzhou. Core development areas, such as the Zhengzhou urban areas, are in deficit, whereas a balance or surplus can be observed in rural areas far from urban centers. (3) The surplus hotspots of ES budgets were mainly distributed in the western and southern mountainous areas of Zhengzhou, and they were scattered and the scope shrank, with a decrease of 2.73 times in 20 years, whereas the deficit hotspots expanded outward with each urban area as the center, with an increase of 5.77%. Ecological management zoning (ecological conservation area, ecological improvement area, and ecological reconstruction area) with the effective guidance of ecological and economic policies could comprehensively improve ES management and achieve urban sustainability. The framework in this study can easily and quickly assess the supply and demand status of ES and provide scientific support for the ecological management in rapidly urbanizing areas.

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 1001
Author(s):  
Xinxin Fu ◽  
Xiaofeng Wang ◽  
Jitao Zhou ◽  
Jiahao Ma

With rapid urbanization and industrialization, China’s metropolises have undergone a huge shift in land use, which has had a profound impact on the ecological environment. Accordingly, the contradictions between regional production, living, and ecological spaces have intensified. The study of the optimization of production-living-ecological space (PLES) is crucial for the sustainable use of land resources and regional socio-economic development. However, research on the optimization of land patterns based on PLES is still being explored, and a unified technical framework for integrated optimization has yet to be developed. Ecosystem services (ES), as a bridge between people and nature, provide a vehicle for the interlinking of elements of the human-land system coupling. The integration of ES supply and demand into ecosystem assessments can enhance the policy relevance and practical application of the ES concept in land management and is also conducive to achieving ecological security and safeguarding human well-being. In this study, an integrated framework comprising four core steps was developed to optimize the PLES in such a way that all ecosystem services are in surplus as far as possible. It was also applied to a case study in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin. A regression analysis between ES and PLES was used to derive equilibrium thresholds for the supply and demand of ES. The ternary phase diagram method was used to determine the direction and magnitude of the optimization of the PLES, and finally, the corresponding optimization recommendations were made at different scales.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Wei Shui ◽  
Kexin Wu ◽  
Yong Du ◽  
Haifeng Yang

Bay areas are endowed with unique sea and land resources, location advantages, and high environmental carrying capacities. The rapid urbanization process has intensified the demand for limited natural resources, leading to a series of problems in coastal zones such as land use conflicts and the degradation of ecosystem services. Taking Quanzhou, a bay city in a metropolitan region, as an example, this paper established an accounting model of ecosystem services supply and consumption demand based on multisource data (meteorological site data, land use data and statistical data). We estimated the supply capacity and consumption demand of provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services in Quanzhou from 2005 to 2015. In addition, the supply and demand of ecosystem services were simulated for 2030 under different scenarios. The results showed that the supply capacity of ecosystem services in Quanzhou was greater than the demand in general, but the supply-demand difference showed a gradual decrease. The high-value areas of supply capacity were concentrated in the upstream basin in the non-bay area, while the high-value areas of consumption demand were located downstream of the river basin in the bay area. The supply-demand difference in the bay area was negative, indicating that it was in a state of supply-demand imbalance and that the ecological security was under threat. Among the three simulated scenarios in 2030, the balance between supply and demand declined compared with the results of 2015, with the most serious decline in the natural scenario. The method to quantify the evolution of spatial and temporal patterns in supply and demand of ecosystem services could provide a decision-making reference for natural resource management in Quanzhou. This is conducive to the improvement and establishment of urban ecological security research systems, especially in bay areas that are lacking research.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 343
Author(s):  
Cecilia Arnaiz-Schmitz ◽  
Cristina Herrero-Jáuregui ◽  
María F. Schmitz

Land management focused from the social-ecological perspective of ecosystem services should consider cultural services in decision-making processes. Nature-based tourism offers a great potential for landscape conservation, local development and the well-being of human populations. However, the subjectivity of recreational ecosystem services has meant a clear impediment to assessing and mapping them. In this study, an integrated numerical spatial method is developed, which quantifies the supply and demand of recreational ecosystem services and allows mapping their spatial correspondence along a rural-urban gradient. The procedure also allows quantifying the influence of the landscape structure and the presence of protected areas on the degree of coupling between supply of recreational ecosystem services and demand for outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism and reveals that protected areas are hotspots of recreational ecosystem services. The results obtained highlight the usefulness of the methodological procedure developed as a tool for sustainable land planning and management from an integrative social-ecological approach.


PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e4597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Qu ◽  
Ming Lu

Rapid urbanization and agricultural development has resulted in the degradation of ecosystems, while also negatively impacting ecosystem services (ES) and urban sustainability. Identifying conservation priorities for ES and applying reasonable management strategies have been found to be effective methods for mitigating this phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to propose a comprehensive framework for identifying ES conservation priorities and associated management strategies for these planning areas. First, we incorporated 10 ES indicators within a systematic conservation planning (SCP) methodology in order to identify ES conservation priorities with high irreplaceability values based on conservation target goals associated with the potential distribution of ES indicators. Next, we assessed the efficiency of the ES conservation priorities for meeting the designated conservation target goals. Finally, ES conservation priorities were clustered into groups using a K-means clustering analysis in an effort to identify the dominant ES per location before formulating management strategies. We effectively identified 12 ES priorities to best represent conservation target goals for the ES indicators. These 12 priorities had a total areal coverage of 13,364 km2 representing 25.16% of the study area. The 12 priorities were further clustered into five significantly different groups (p-values between groups < 0.05), which helped to refine management strategies formulated to best enhance ES across the study area. The proposed method allows conservation and management plans to easily adapt to a wide variety of quantitative ES target goals within urban and agricultural areas, thereby preventing urban and agriculture sprawl and guiding sustainable urban development.


Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández ◽  
Karina M. Pallagst

This chapter aims to analyze the implications that urban sustainability, socio-ecosystems, and ecosystem services have as the bases to design the urban green growth strategies. The method used is the analytic based on the theoretical and conceptual literature reviews on the topics described. Urban sustainability and environmental performance integrates biodiversity and socio-ecosystems for the provision of better quality ecosystem services supported by green infrastructure design into the green projects aimed to achieve economic and environmental benefits. It is concluded that the ecosystem services and human well-being may suffer irreversible severe declines if sustainability is not built based on biodiversity of socio ecosystems, green infrastructure, and natural capital.


Author(s):  
Daria Sikorska ◽  
Piotr Sikorski ◽  
Richard J. Hopkins

Urban lakes, especially those of natural origin, provide numerous ecosystem services, recreation being one of the most important and highly valued by the city dwellers Fulfilling the need of city residents to relax and have contact with nature has become a priority in urbanized areas and has been proved to positively affect people&rsquo;s health and well-being. The recreational potential of water bodies was identified to be most important aspect of ecosystem services to the residents of the neighboring areas. Assessment of ecosystem services provisioning to society based on the real time spent by the citizens, in the rural-urban gradient allowed us to show how the economic benefits of lakes differ in urbanized, suburban and rural landscapes. Growth of cities has led to increased population density in the surroundings of ecologically valuable areas, resulting in higher pressure from visitors seeking recreational values. Along with urbanization, the impoverishment of ecosystem functions takes place limiting their capability to provide ecosystem services. In this work provisioning of ecosystem services of 28 floodplain lakes located in urban-rural gradient of Warsaw agglomeration was assessed. The relation between the ecological value of the water bodies, measured using naturalness indices, and the ecosystem services they can provide was assessed. The results showed that the floodplain lakes located along the urban-rural gradient are of a great importance to the citizens due to their recreational potential. However the provisioning of recreational ecosystem services is poorly connected with the ecological value of the floodplain lakes and the economic benefits are of a greatest importance in objects included in the urban green spaces.


Ecoscience ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanqiong Ye ◽  
Jia’en Zhang ◽  
Brett A. Bryan ◽  
Lei Gao ◽  
Zhong Qin ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 728
Author(s):  
Yahong Liu ◽  
Hailian Sun ◽  
Lei Shi ◽  
Huimin Wang ◽  
Zhai Xiu ◽  
...  

With rapid urbanization in China, the dramatic land-use changes are one of the most prominent features that have substantially affected the land ecosystems, thus seriously threatening sustainable development. However, current studies have focused more on evaluating the economic efficiency of land-use, while the loss and degradation of ecosystem services are barely considered. To address these issues, this study first proposed a land use-based input–output index system, incorporating the impact on ecosystem services value (ESV), and then by taking 30 provinces in China as a case study. We further employed the super-efficiency slacks-based model (Super-SBM) and the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model to explore the spatial–temporal changes and driving factors of the evaluated land-use eco-efficiency. We found that the evaluated ESV was 28.09 trillion yuan (at the price of 2000) in 2015, and that the total ESV experienced an inverted U-shaped trend during 2000–2015.The average land-use eco-efficiency exhibited a downward trend from 0.87 in 2000 to 0.68 in 2015 with distinct regional differences by taking into account the ESV. Our results revealed that northeastern region had the highest efficiency, followed by the eastern, western, and central region of China. Finally, we identified a U-shaped relationship between the eco-efficiency and land urbanization, and found that technological innovation made great contributions to the improvement of the eco-efficiency. These findings highlight the importance of the ESV in the evaluation of land-use eco-efficiency. Future land development and management should pay additional attention to the land ecosystems, especially the continuous supply of human well-being related ecosystem services.


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