Temporal-spatial changes in ecosystem services and implications for the conservation of alpine rangelands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Ecosystem services emerged as a concept to bridge ecosystem conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources. Given the limited funding and resources available for ecosystem conservation, fully understanding and identifying the temporal-spatial patterns of ecosystem services can help establish a cost-efficient ecosystem conservation strategy. Although studies have indicated globally important ecosystem services on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), key ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, water provision and habitat quality, have not been spatial-explicitly quantified, leading to a lack of understanding of key spatial patterns for conservation of this unique alpine ecosystem. To fill this gap, these three key ecosystem services were simulated for the QTP rangelands by using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-off model, and the hotspots of those ecosystem services were evaluated and identified. It was shown that alpine meadows played a key role compared with alpine steppe and alpine desert in providing the ecosystem services of water provision, carbon storage and habitat quality in the alpine rangelands of the QTP. In addition, it was shown that there had been a considerable decrease in both the potential and the protected hotspots of ecosystem service between 1990 and 2000, implying that the existing conservation system (i.e. National Nature Reserves) could not effectively maintain these hotspots and that there was a need to restore those degraded rangeland ecosystems within the existing conservation system. The large-scale spatial heterogeneity among the different ecosystem services found in this study can be used to inform a more comprehensive conservation strategy for the provision of ecosystem services as well as biodiversity in the QTP rangelands.

Temporal variation and spatial scale dependency of ecosystem service interactions: a case study on the central Loess Plateau of China

“…Interactions among ecosystem services can shift over time (Tilman 2000;Jia et al 2014;Li et al 2015). In some cases, synergies or trade-offs are enhanced or weakened (Jia et al 2014;Lauf et al 2014;Zheng et al 2014).…”

Spatio-temporal variations of conservation hotspots based on ecosystem services in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China

“…There have been many studies that have used the InVEST model to explicitly elucidate different ecosystem services [ 8 , 19 ], and to analyze as well as forecast ecosystem service dynamics under stakeholder-defined scenarios of land use [ 3 , 20 ]. In China, this model has been applied to the Three Rivers Source Areas, Qinghai province, Poyang Lake and some other key ecological regions [ 21 – 23 ], except Southwest China which is abundant in biodiversity and ecosystem services.…”

Enhancing the resilience of coupled human and natural systems of alpine rangelands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau

“…We addressed the following questions: (1) what are the environmental and socio-economic drivers of rangeland degradation Wang et al 2015a;Wu et al 2015a); (2) how do social and natural pastoral systems respond to environmental changes Zhao et al 2015;Liu et al 2015;Wu et al 2015b); (3) what adaptive strategies are being used by local people to cope with global changes Wu et al 2015b); (4) how can scientific knowledge be translated into practical applications of sustainable rangeland management (Wang et al 2015b;Tang et al 2015;Li et al 2015); and (5) how can effective government policies of rangeland management be formulated within a framework of coupled social and natural systems Wu et al 2015b;Su et al 2015)? The papers presented in this special edition address these questions by examining diverse topics about alpine rangelands of the QTP across multiple spatial scales (site, watershed and region) and multiple disciplines (social, ecological, economic, cultural and political) within the context of coupled human-natural systems (Fig.…”