Ecosystem Services and Their Driving Forces in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomerations, China

Abstract

The impact of human activities on ecosystems can be measured by ecosystem services. The study of ecosystem services is an essential part of coupled human and natural systems. However, there is limited understanding about the driving forces of ecosystem services, especially from a spatial perspective. This study attempts to fill the gap by examining the driving forces of ecosystem services with an integrated spatial approach. The results indicate that more than US$430 billion of ecosystem services value (ESV) is produced annually in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomerations (MRYRUA), with forestland providing the largest proportion of total ESV (≥75%) and hydrological regulation function accounting for the largest proportion of total ESV (≥15%). The average ESV in the surrounding areas is obviously higher than those in the metropolitan areas, in the plains areas, and along major traffic routes. Spatial dependence and spatial spillover effects were observed in the ecosystem services in the MRYRUA. Spatial regression results indicate that road density, proportion of developed land, and river density are negatively associated with ecosystem services, while distance to a socioeconomic center, proportion of forestland land, elevation, and precipitation are positively associated with ecosystem services. The findings in this study suggest that these driving factors and the spillover effect should be taken into consideration in ecosystem protection and land-use policymaking in urban agglomerations.

Spatial–Temporal Interaction Relationship between Ecosystem Services and Urbanization of Urban Agglomerations in the Transitional Zone of Three Natural Regions

“…The improved ESs were consistent with those from the China Ecosystem Assessment at the national scale [56] and from other studies [57]. Such improvement, similar to that at the national scale, may be primarily attributed to national conservation policies started in 2000, which effectively alleviated ecological deterioration [54,56].…”

“…The impact of urbanization depends on the type of ES. Specifically, the level of urbanization has a significant negative spatial correlation with water yield, sediment retention, and carbon storage but a positive spatial correlation with nutrient purification, which indicates that the improvement of the urbanization level of the LX urban agglomeration has promoted an increase in nutrient purification in the region; this is contrary to the conclusions obtained by other scholars in the central and eastern urban agglomeration [50,54] because the InVEST nutrient purification module is primarily used to evaluate the purification function of nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients in the ecosystem. The amount of nutrient purification depends on the pollutant load and the retention rate of nitrogen and phosphorus.…”

“…Urbanization is a complex system that includes historical processes of social productivity development, technological progress, and industrial structure adjustment [52][53][54]. Urbanization reflects changes in multiple systems, such as regional population, economy, society, and environment [55].…”

Identifying the Impact of Landscape Pattern on Ecosystem Services in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River Urban Agglomerations, China

“…The equivalent value per unit area was defined as the relative importance of various ecosystem services to the grain production of cultivated land, where the equivalent value per unit area of grain production of cultivated land was set to 1. Therefore, we could obtain the equivalent value per unit area of other ecosystem services by comparing their relative importance to the grain production of cultivated land [ 10 , 21 ]. The equivalent value per unit area proposed by Xie et al was revised using expert knowledge and with reference to the actual situation of China’s ecosystem, but it cannot be used in MRYRUA directly because of the spatial heterogeneity of the ESV.…”

“…The benefit transfer method uses existing valuation studies to infer monetary values from one or more existing study sites for application to target study sites that lack original valuation data [ 20 ]. In previous studies, extensive research has been conducted on evaluations, trade-offs, supply and demand, scenario prediction, influence factors, and the optimal regulation of ecosystem services, but there are still inadequacies [ 9 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. The spatialization of the ESV has always been controversial.…”