Temporal And Spatial Changes Of Ecosystem Service Capacity And Its Response To Human Disturbance In The Huaihe River Basin

Ecosystem services are important bridges between human well-being and natural ecosystems,ensuring their sustainable supply is a crucial factor in maintaining regional and national ecological security and sustainable development.A river basin is a relatively complete,independent composite ecosystem linked by river system,with a frequent material exchange,energy flows,and vital ecosystem services.As the population grows,urbanization accelerates,and other human activities result in the over-utilization of resources,the relationship between people and land in the river basin is becoming increasingly tense,which in turn affects the functioning of the river basin ecosystem.Therefore,quantifying the changes in capacity of ecosystem services and its response to changes of human disturbances is important for the river basin to formulating scientific and reasonable optimization and regulation strategies.The Huaihe River Basin is located in the South-North climatic junction zone and is an important food and mineral resources base in China,occupying a very important position in the overall socio-economic development of China.Based on the theories and methods related to landscape ecology,this paper used In VEST models to calculate and analyze the spatial and temporal dynamic characteristics of and trade-off relationships among four ecosystem services(water production,carbon sequestration,soil retention,and biodiversity conservation).Integrating the knowledge of geography and landscape ecology,combined remote sensing(RS),geographic information system(GIS),Matlab technologies,and multi-source shared data,to established a new a novel model of human disturbances(HDI),and analyzed the temporal and spatial changes of human disturbances.By using various spatial and temporal statistical analysis methods to analyze the response of ecosystem services to changes in the intensity of human disturbances,thus providing scientific basis for protecting the health of ecosystem and maintaining the sustainable development of the Huaihe River Basin.The main conclusions obtained from the study are as follows.(1)From 1990 to 2018,arable land has always been the dominant land use type in the Huaihe River Basin,accounting for more than 66% of the area;changes in land use types were mainly characterized by a decrease in the area of arable land and grassland,and an increase in the area of urban,rural settlements and artificial water bodies.Temporally,water production capacity showed an increasing trend,while the other three ecosystem services showed a decreasing trend,and there is a strong synergistic relationship between the three ecosystem services.Spatially,all four ecosystem services showed a high service capacity in natural land-use areas such as forestlands and grasslands,and thus all four ecosystem services show a certain spatial synergy.(2)Between 1990-2005 and 2005-2018,the intensity of human disturbances in the Huaihe River Basin showed a gradual increase and decrease trend due to urbanization and construction and related policy changes,respectively.During 1990 to 2005,the intensity of human disturbances in terms of land use naturalness,resource consumption and increased pollution emissions all showed an increase trend,and occurred mainly in arable land and industrial land areas,indicating that agricultural and industrial activities were the main reasons for the increase in human disturbances intensity during this period.Between 2005 and 2018,under the implementation of ecological protection policies such as returning farmland to forests and energy conservation and emission reduction,except for the naturalness of land use was still declining further,resource consumption and pollution emissions have both decreased significantly,which contributing to a reduction in the intensity of human disturbances in the Huaihe River Basin as a whole.However,due to the continued expansion of urban areas and the high concentration of population,urban areas have the highest levels of human disturbances and continue to expand in all directions.(3)From 1990 to 2018,there was significant spatial and temporal variability in the response of ecosystem services to human disturbances.Temporally,three ecosystems-carbon sequestration,soil conservation and biodiversity conservation-and human disturbances all showed a trend of increasing and then decreasing,thus showing a certain positive correlation in time.And the increased intensity of human disturbances would lead to reduce the synergy between carbon sequestration services,soil conservation services and biodiversity protection;while water production services were less affected by human disturbances.Spatially,human disturbances could obviously limit the capacity of the four ecosystem services and show a clear aggregation effect in space.The synergy between water production services,soil conservation services and carbon sequestration services decreased as the intensity of human disturbances increased;and the synergy between carbon sequestration services-biodiversity conservation and soil conservation services-biodiversity conservation tend to increased and then decreased;while the synergy between water production services-biodiversity conservation and soil conservation services-carbon sequestration services did not sensitivity.