Identifying Ecosystem Service Trade-Offs and Their Response to Landscape Patterns at Different Scales in an Agricultural Basin in Central China

Abstract

Identifying relationships among multiple ecosystem services (ESs) at different scales and the factors affecting such relationships is the foundation for sustainable ecosystem management. A case study was conducted in the Sihu Lake Basin, an agricultural basin in Central China, to examine the interactions among ESs across different scales and the responses to landscape pattern changes (2000–2020). The results indicate that (1) agricultural land and wetlands were converted into construction land and gradually decreased in size; forestland and artificial channels gradually increased in size. (2) ESs had spatial heterogeneity in their strength at the grid and county scales. (3) Most relationships between ESs were synergistic at the grid and county scales, and most correlations increased as the scale increased due to landscape consistency. (4) The landscape metrics explained approximately 45.56–61.06% of the variations in ESs, and the main influencing factor was agricultural land. Our results demonstrated that the construction of rivers and channels, dense and widely distributed agricultural land and construction land were more positively correlated with increasing crop production and nitrogen export, whereas forestland exhibited a stronger contribution to increasing carbon storage and water yield. These findings explore appropriate management methods for agricultural development and ecological conservation in agricultural basins.

Multiscale Analysis of the Effects of Landscape Pattern on the Trade-Offs and Synergies of Ecosystem Services in Southern Zhejiang Province, China

“…While correlation analysis can calculate the trade-offs or synergies among ESs, it can hide the spatial heterogeneity of ES's relationships [68,69]. For example, the correlation results showed that 10 pairs of ES relationships between the five ESs types were robust across scales (Figure 3) mainly due to land-use consistency [13,28,66]. However, the spatial overlay results showed that changing the scale can enhance, weaken, or even reverse the interaction between ESs (Figure 5), which suggested that the relationship of ESs changed both in direction and strength across scales [70,71].…”

“…Scale effects cannot be ignored when analyzing the relationship between landscape patterns and ecosystems because landscape patterns are scale-dependent and TOSs are spatially heterogeneous [11,12]. Therefore, a multiscale analysis of the effects of landscape patterns on TOSs is essential for ecological management and decision-making [13].…”

Estudio piloto de la restauración funcional del paisaje rural en la microcuenca Coyolito, Francisco Morazán, Honduras

“…(1) Índice de Relación Perímetro-Area (PAFRAC), ( 2 Esta metodología fue desarrollada por los investigadores Mcgarigal et al (2002), quienes propusieron una serie de índices de paisaje para medir la conectividad y fragmentación del paisaje. El IBP se ha utilizado en numerosos estudios para evaluar la biodiversidad del paisaje y su relación con diferentes variables, como la intensificación agrícola (Li et al, 2022) o la urbanización (Kuang et al, 2021).…”