Positive Changes in Ecosystem Services in a Poverty-Stricken and Ecologically Fragile Region

Abstract:

Urbanization and growth of population and economy have exert great pressure and influences on ecosystems and the sustainability of ecosystem services (ES). How to reduce the pressure and restore degraded ecosystems toward sustainable development has been a great challenge for societies, particularly in southwestern China. In this study, we investigated changes in ecosystem services around Bijie city in Guizhou Province, where major efforts have been put in place to address poverty and severe ecosystem degradation in the past decades. We used the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm to map land use change and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoff (InVEST) model to quantify changes in ecosystem services. Results showed that (1) expansion of Bijie city was slow in the early period but grew rapidly since 2010 when the city area tripled; (2) Along with the rapid urban expansion, the value of ecosystem services, however, increased continuously since 2010 due to various ecological restoration campaigns carried out in the region; (3) Proportions of ecosystem services provided by different ecosystems redistributed constantly; forest ecosystem services gradually increased while cropland ecosystem services declined. Our research shows the impacts of rapid urban expansion and ecological restoration on ecosystem services in a fragile, degraded karst region, a successful story that can benefit other poverty-stricken and ecologically fragile regions in the world.