Assessing the influences of ecological restoration on perceptions of cultural ecosystem services by residents of agricultural landscapes of western China

Abstract

Landscape change caused by ecological restoration projects has both positive and negative influences on human livelihoods, yet surprisingly little research on the cultural consequences of ecological restoration in agricultural landscapes has taken place. Cultural consequences can be captured in the ecosystem services framework as cultural ecosystem services (CES). However, assessment and valuation of these services to support decision-making for this essential ecosystem is lacking. To help fill this gap, we assessed the opinions of Chinese rural communities about CES and the changes in their perception under the Grain for Green program (GFG), a nationwide program to relieve the pressure on ecosystems (soil erosion and land degradation) by converting cultivated land or barren land on steep slopes into grassland and forests. We used Guyuan City in China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as a case study, using a workshop to identify the CES provided by the agricultural landscape, followed by semi-structured household interviews to quantify perceptions of these CES. We found that all eight CES types identified by the workshop were perceived by the rural communities. Reforestation changed their perceptions of CES directly due to land cover change and indirectly due to the resulting economic changes and migration of mostly young workers in search of better jobs. Cultivated land was perceived as more important than forest for CES provision. In addition, residential areas were perceived as providing significant CES because of local traditions that produce close and highly social neighborhood bonds in agricultural landscapes.

Effects of social capital, risk perception and awareness on environmental protection behavior

“…China's western region has essential ecological functions, which is of great significance for maintaining ecological security in China and even in East Asia (Liu and Zhu 2018). Therefore, in-depth systematic research has been carried out by the scientific community concerning soil and water conservation (Wang et al 2020), the persistence of biodiversity and endangered species (Jing et al 2020), regional ecological carrying capacity and sustainability (Pan et al 2017), effects of ecological restoration schemes (Halik et al 2019), environmental protection behavior and public consciousness of circular economy development (Dou et al 2019;Jin and Wang 2016).…”

RETRACTED: Mapping Indicators of Cultural Ecosystem Services: Review and Relevance to Urban Context

“…The complication in urban ecosystems is specific in many different aspects, such as a large number of various land-cover types. This makes CES evaluation based on land-use information especially challenging and it is requiring data sources with a high resolution and that is not always available (Dou et al, 2019). Moreover, the problems related to mapping of CES have been increased because of CES are nonmaterial services compared with other material services.…”

Theory of stepwise ecological restoration

“…. 随着人口的增长与全球气候变化, 我国生态脆弱 区贫困化与环境保护的矛盾日益突出, 探索生态脆弱 区如何摆脱"贫困陷阱"、实现生态保护与社会经济可 持续发展, 是地球圈层人类环境和生态系统脆弱性和 恢复力等相关研究的关键科学问题之一 [63,64] . 一方面, 生态修复可以提升生态系统的水源涵养、水土保持和 生物多样性等功能, 为人类获取清洁水源、安全食品 以及多样的基因等提供了保障, 从而促进人类福祉的 提升 [65,66] .…”