Impact of Land Use Intensity on Ecosystem Services: An Example from the Agro-Pastoral Ecotone of Central Inner Mongolia

Abstract

Land use intensity is an important indicator of human activities, so we quantified the land use intensity and five ecosystem services (soil conservation, water conservation, carbon storage, net primary productivity (NPP), and crop production) in 13 subbasins of the Tabu River Basin in an agro-pastoral ecotone in central Inner Mongolia. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationships among ecosystem services and the responses of the services to the impact of land use intensity. The primary conclusions were as follows: (1) All five ecosystem services gradually diminished from the upper to the lower reaches of the Tabu River Basin; (2) Water conservation exhibited a trade-off relationship with soil conservation, NPP, and crop production, but it exhibited a synergistic relationship with carbon storage. There were also synergistic relationships between soil conservation, carbon storage, NPP, and crop production; (3) As land use intensity increased, soil conservation, NPP and crop production monotonically increased. In contrast, water conservation exhibited a monotonically decreasing trend, and carbon storage followed a unimodal curve; (4) In this region, suitable ecosystem services were sustained at a land use intensity of approximately 3.95.

Simulation of Land Use Change and Ecosystem Service Value Dynamics under Ecological Constraints in Anhui Province, China

“…As human activity intensifies, the structure and functions of land use have undergone significant changes [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. However, the development of social economy and huge population pressures have promoted the increase in the intensity of land resource use [ 6 ], which has led to a series of ecological and environmental problems, and the damage to ecosystems has threatened global ecological security and sustainable development [ 7 , 8 , 9 ]. With the enhancement of human’s understanding of ecosystems and awareness of ecological protection, the estimation of ecosystem service value (ESV) has become an important foundation for the implementation of ecosystem management and a hotspot for regional ecological environment evaluation research [ 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”

Detecting Vegetation Variations and Main Drivers over the Agropastoral Ecotone of Northern China through the Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition Method

“…Agropastoral ecotones (hereafter APEs) refer to transition zones interlaced by croplands and grasslands [1], and they are widely distributed in the arid and semiarid regions of the world [2]. In China, the APEs area spans throughout the whole mainland from northeast to southwest, covering 13.35% of China's land area (1.29 million km 2 ), with residential populations and grain yield accounting for 4.68% (59.30 million) and 7.98% of the total population and grain yield of China, respectively [3]. Therefore, the arid and semiarid agropastoral ecotone of northern China (hereafter APENC) is a typical ecologically transitional zone (largest in area and the longest in spatial scale), which effectively prevents the desert in the northwest from spreading south and east [4].…”

Influence of land use and land cover changes on ecosystem services in the Bilate Alaba Sub-watershed, Southern Ethiopia

“…The changes in ecosystem services were varied on the spatial and temporal distribution of land use/land cover (Bryan, 2013;Hu et al, 2008). Ecosystem service is defined as the ecology provisions any kinds which make the sustainable life of human being in the biosphere (Li et al, 2017). In terms of functionalities, ES is categorized into four major components; provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services (MEA, 2005).…”