Uncertainties of Two Methods in Selecting Priority Areas for Protecting Soil Conservation Service at Regional Scale

Abstract

Soil conservation (SC) is an important ecosystem regulating service. At present, methods for SC mapping to identify priority areas are primarily based on empirical soil erosion models, such as the RUSLE (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) based model. However, the parameters of the empirical soil conservation model are based on long-term observations of field experiments at small spatial scales, which are very difficult to obtain and must be simplified when implementing these models at large spatial scales. Such simplification of model parameters may lead to uncertainty in quantifying SC at regional scale. In this study, we have analyzed a new method to map SC in Jiangxi Province of China based on the multiplication of multiple biophysical data. After comparing the spatial-temporal changes of SC from the RUSLE based model and those from the surrogate indicator based method in the study area, the similarities and differences of these methods for identifying SC priority areas were revealed. The result showed that the two methods similarly represented the effects of vegetation coverage and land use types on SC, however, they were significantly different in representing the spatial pattern of SC priority areas and its temporal change. Based on the comparisons, the advantages and drawbacks for both methods were made clear and suggestions were made for the suitable use of the two methods, which may benefit for the research and application of concerning the planning and assessment with SC as key criteria.

Half century change of interactions among ecosystem services driven by ecological restoration: Quantification and policy implications at a watershed scale in the Chinese Loess Plateau

“…Therefore, it is a suitable method to estimate the effect of hill slope vegetation rehabilitation on soil conservation. However, this may have been overestimated in this research due to the omission of the local sediment deposition process (Kinnell, 2008) and the use of degraded bare ground as control (Zhang et al, 2017). These overestimations were made for the absolute values of annual SR but did not exclude the SR brought by vegetation rehabilitation.…”

Spatio-temporal variations of the flood mitigation service of ecosystem under different climate scenarios in the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River Basin, China

“…However, the increasingly intensification of climate change and human activities can lead to degradation of the FMS, increasingly threatening the local water resources security and ecological stability. In FMS research, flood risk zonation can be executed according to relative risk grade of different areas, Priority Areas for protecting FMS can be designated in local area (Zhang et al, 2017), and some potential problems in regional water crisis could be prevented or mitigated in the future.…”

Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Factors of Ecosystem Services Value in the Hexi Regions, Northwest China

“…Over the past decades, research has shown that the functions and values of ecosystem services have degraded due to climatic and land-use changes [8][9][10]. Recently, the land use and land cover change (LUCC) has been more frequent on the global and regional scales [11,12], and these land conversions may lead to land degradation (e.g., soil erosion, salinization, desertification) [13], biodiversity decline, and the loss of ecosystem services [14,15], which in turn affects food and ecological security. Most studies have suggested that the land-use changes may exert negative impacts on the ESV associated with inappropriate human exploitation [16] and the complex interactions between human and natural drivers of the ESV, rendering the previous studies insufficient for predicting and addressing future problems.…”