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

Ying Luo; Yihe Lü; Bojie Fu; Qiuju Zhang; Ting Li; Weiyin Hu; Alexis Comber

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.116

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

Sci Total Environ. 2019 Feb 15;651(Pt 2):2546-2557. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.116. Epub 2018 Oct 10.

Authors

Ying Luo¹, Yihe Lü², Bojie Fu³, Qiuju Zhang⁴, Ting Li¹, Weiyin Hu⁵, Alexis Comber⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Urban and Region Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Urban and Region Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: lyh@rcees.ac.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Urban and Region Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing 100875, China.
⁴ Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
⁵ Working Station General on Soil and Water Conservation of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang 050011, China.
⁶ School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.

PMID: 30340190
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.116

Abstract

The concept of Ecosystem Service (ES) has provided an underpinning framework for ecological restoration research and applications. Ecological restoration is a corrective intervention that aims to reverse land degradation and to contribute to the 2030 Global Sustainable Development goal of Land Degradation Neutrality. It is critical to investigate the long-term effects of ecological restoration and land use change on ESs and ES interactions (synergies or trade-offs) to better understand the mechanisms supporting this goal. This paper describes an analysis of land use and ESs using historical data for a typical watershed in Chinese Loess Plateau, which has experienced series of restoration activities since the 1950s. Six important ESs (food provisioning, soil retention, hydrological regulation, carbon sequestration, water purification and habitat provisioning for biodiversity) were quantified at eight intervals between 1958 and 2015. The interactions between ESs were evaluated by correlation analysis. The results show that soil retention, carbon sequestration, water purification and habitat provisioning for biodiversity increased significantly across the different land use types over several decades but not hydrological regulation. The relationship between ESs was found to be variable over different time periods and a transition point between 1990 and 1995 was identified. Grassland was found to maintain greater water yield than woodland with high values of other ESs. The results suggest that trade-offs between ESs can be mitigated by adjusting the proportion of some important land use types (such as woodland and grassland).

Keywords: Correlation analysis; Ecological restoration; Ecosystem service; Land-use change; Temporal scale; Watershed management.