Ecosystem service multifunctionality assessment and coupling coordination analysis with land use and land cover change in China's coastal zones.

Ecosystem services (ESs) have received widespread attention worldwide for their potential to solve sustainability issues. However, extensive land use and land cover change (LUCC) driven by human activities has raised concerns regarding its impacts on ESs, especially in coastal zones. More importantly, spatial-temporal changes, their coupling relationships with LUCC, and their underlying drivers have not been thoroughly analyzed. This study focuses on China's coastal zones to investigate the spatial-temporal changes of ecosystem service multifunctionality (ESM) from 2000 to 2018. Coupling coordination degree (CCD) analysis of the relationship between ESM and comprehensive intensity of land use was applied to identify coastal cities with low-level coordination and their main drivers in 2018. The results show that: (1) the proportion with high levels of ESM decreased by 1.01% from 2000 to 2010 and then increased by 3.29% from 2010 to 2018; (2) the ESM of China's coastal zones present significant spatial heterogeneity, and the low levels of ESM are mainly distributed in the north and urban areas, while most areas in the southern coastal zones have high levels of ESM; (3) forest land is the leading land cover type for ESM, and China's forest conservation policies significantly contribute to the increase in ESM; (4) the CCD of most cities in the southern coastal zones, apart from Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta, is at a relatively high level and experiences no significant changes, while most cities in the northern coastal zones display an improving trend; (5) the land use type, landform type, and leaf area index are the determinants of ESM, and the annual average temperature, population density, and surface elevation are the greatest influences on the CCD. The findings of this study can inform ecological conservation and landscape planning and are beneficial to the sustainable development of coastal zones in China.

Spatio-temporal variation of land use and ecosystem service values and their impact factors in an urbanized agricultural basin since the reform and opening of China.

The provision capacity of ecosystem services is affected by land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and biophysical and socio-economic characteristics. Studies related to ecosystem service values (ESVs) and their impact factors can provide a good reference for natural capital management. In this paper, the temporal and spatial dynamics of LULC and ESVs in the Nansihu Lake basin, China, since the reform and opening of China were analyzed by a combined method of spatial analysis and correlation analysis, and the factors that influence ESV changes were discussed. The results indicated that the main LULC changes were the enormous loss of cultivated land and rapid urban land expansion since the policy of reformation and opening in 1978. The ESVs in the basin decreased by 1.64% (1.70 × 108 US$) from 1975 to 2015, and the main impact factors of this temporal change in ESVs were the changes in waterbodies and cultivated land. Spatial patterns of ESVs were significantly influenced by socio-economic factors in the basin, such as population density and intensity of land use. This research provides alternatives and robust information for policy-making processes for the Nansihu Lake basin, and similar work can be conducted in other parts of the country.