Effect of Urbanization on Ecosystem Service Values in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration of China from 2000 to 2014

Shan Liu, Mingxia Yang, Yuling Mou, Yanrong Meng, Xiaolu Zhou and Changhui Peng
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Shan Liu: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Mingxia Yang: College of Resources and Environmental Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha 410081, China
Yuling Mou: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Yanrong Meng: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Xiaolu Zhou: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Changhui Peng: Center for Ecological Forecasting and Global Change, College of Forestry, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-15

Abstract: Rapid urbanization has led to the continuous deterioration of the surrounding natural ecosystem. It is important to identify the key urbanization factors that affect ecosystem services and analyze the potential effects of these factors on the ecosystem. We selected the Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration to investigate these effects, and designed three indicators to map the urbanization level: Population density, gross domestic product (GDP) density, and the construction land proportion. Four indicators were chosen to quantify ecosystem services: Food production, carbon sequestration and oxygen production, water conservation, and soil conservation. To handle the nonlinear interactions, we used a random forest (RF) method to assess the effect of urbanization on ecosystem services in the BTH area from 2000 to 2014. Our study demonstrated that population density and economic growth were the internal driving forces affecting ecosystem services. We observed changing trends in the effect of urbanization: The effect of population density on ecosystem services increased, the effect of the proportion of construction land was consistent with population density, and the effect of GDP density on ecosystem services decreased. Our results suggest that controlling the population and GDP would significantly influence the sustainable development in large urban areas.

Keywords: urban ecology; metropolis; ecosystem services; machine learning; random forest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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