Putting a Price on Nature: Ecosystem Service Value and Ecological Risk in the Dongting Lake Area, China

Lisha Tang, Hualou Long () and Daniel P. Aldrich
Additional contact information
Lisha Tang: School of Business, Hunan First Normal University, Changsha 410205, China
Hualou Long: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Daniel P. Aldrich: Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: Understanding the relationship between ecosystem service value and ecological risk evolutions holds great theoretical and practical significance, as it helps to ensure the quality management of ecosystems and the sustainable development of human–land system interactions. We analyzed this relationship in the Dongting Lake area in China from 1995 to 2020 using data from remote sensing-interpreted land use with ArcGIS and Geoda. We used the equivalent factor method to estimate the ecosystem service value, constructed a landscape ecological risk index to quantitatively describe the ecological risk of Dongting Lake, and analyzed their correlation. The results show that: (1) over the last 25 years, the ecosystem service value decreased by 31.588 billion yuan, with higher values in the middle of the area and lower values in the surroundings—the highest value was found in forested land and the lowest was for unutilized land; (2) the ecological risk index also decreased slowly over time, from the perspective of single land use type, the ecological risk value of construction land was the lowest, followed by woodland, grassland, and cultivated land, with water area being the highest—the ecological risk level presents the distribution state of whole piece and local aggregation; and (3) the ecological risk index in Dongting Lake area demonstrated positive spatial correlation, and the spatial agglomeration of land with similar risk levels showed a decreasing trend. Areas with strong partial spatial correlations between ecosystem service value and ecological risk index are mainly distributed in the central water areas and their surrounding areas. This study investigates the rational utilization of land resources, and the sustainable development of regional ecological security in Dongting Lake area.

Keywords: ecosystem service value; ecological risk evolution; spatial characteristics; correlation; Dongting Lake area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/4649/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/5/4649/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:5:p:4649-:d:1088942

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().