Spatio-temporal evolution of water-related ecosystem services: Taihu Basin, China

Abstract

Water-related ecosystem services (WESs) arise from the interaction between water ecosystems and their surrounding terrestrial ecosystems. They are critical for human well-being as well as for the whole ecological circle. An urgent service-oriented reform for the utilization and supervision of WESs can assist in avoiding ecological risks and achieving a more sustainable development in the Taihu Basin, China (THB). Spatially distributed models allow the multiple impacts of land use/land cover conversion and climate variation on WESs to be estimated and visualized efficiently, and such models can form a useful component in the toolbox for integrated water ecosystem management. The Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model is used here to evaluate and visualize the spatio-temporal evolution of WESs in the THB from 2000 to 2010. Results indicate that water retention service experienced a decline from 2000 to 2005 with a recovery after 2005, while there was ongoing water scarcity in urban areas. Both the water purification service and the soil retention service underwent a slight decrease over the study period. Nutrients export mainly came from developed land and cultivated land, with the hilly areas in the south of the THB forming the primary area for soil loss. The quantity and distribution of WESs were impacted significantly by the shrinkage of cultivated land and the expansion of developed land. These findings will lay a foundation for a service-oriented management of WESs in the THB and support evidence-based decision making.

Responses of ecosystem services and their trade-offs and synergies to spatiotemporal differentiation of urbanization: Evidence from the Su-Xi-Chang region, China

“…While rapid urbanization has brought a better life to local residents, such as employment, education, and medical care, it has also produced many negative effects. For example, declining crop yield 26 , eutrophic water quality 27 , and weakened climate regulation ability 28 . These issues not only pose a threat to the sustainability of local ecosystems, but also in turn affect economic growth.…”

Scenario simulation of water retention services under land use/cover and climate changes: a case study of the Loess Plateau, China

“…Among modelling tools of ecosystem services, the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs (InVEST) model is the most commonly used approach for reflecting the impacts of land use and climate change on hydrological processes at multi-scales. However, the model is used as a ''black box'' due to non-spatial input parameters, which simplify the evaluation process to a certain extent, yet bringing difficulty to parameter verification (Ochoa and Urbina-Cardona, 2017;Chen et al, 2018;Kim and Jung, 2020). Spatial input parameters could provide better feedback than non-spatial input parameters, considering the spatial variability of climatic and geographic attributes at large scales in the Loess Plateau.…”

Assessment of Future Water Yield and Water Purification Services in Data Scarce Region of Northwest China

“…Ecosystem services are the environmental conditions and public utilities that form and sustain human survival, life, and production in ecosystems and their processes [1]. Water ecosystem services are a type of ecosystem services [2,3] and are particularly important in arid and semi-arid areas where water is the key ecological factor. As a typical representative of arid regions in the world [4], the arid regions of northwest China have long been able to maintain the balance among human survival, development, and ecosystems [5].…”