Responses of Ecosystem Service to Land Use Change in Qinghai Province

Ze Han, Wei Song and Xiangzheng Deng
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Ze Han: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Wei Song: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Energies, 2016, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Qinghai Province has a very fragile ecological environment and is an important component of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. To understand the disturbance caused by human activities to the local ecological system, it is necessary to evaluate the response of ecological service functions to land use change in Qinghai Province and to uncover the sensitivity of ecological service functions to land use change. This study uses a proxy-based method and proposes a sensitivity index to describe the degree of ecological service function response to the land use change in Qinghai Province. The findings were as follows. (1) From 1988 to 2008, the area of cultivated land, construction land and water in Qinghai Province increased, and forest land and grassland continuously decreased. The agricultural economy and the development of urbanization are the main driving factors in land use change in this area. Policies and eco-environmental engineering, such as the grain-for-green project, the Three-North shelterbelt project and the natural forest protection project, have certain effects on controlling the expansion of cultivated land. (2) The value of ecosystem services in Qinghai Province was 157.368 billion yuan, 157.149 billion yuan and 157.726 billion yuan in 1988, 2000 and 2008, respectively, decreasing and then increasing again. (3) The average sensitivity index values of ecological services in Qinghai Province for the periods 1988–2000 and 2000–2008 was 0.693 and 1.137, respectively. This means that for every 1% increase in land use change, the ecological service value fluctuated by 0.693% and 1.137% in those periods.

Keywords: ecological service function; land use change; sensitivity; Qinghai Province (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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