Quantifying Co-Benefits and Trade-Offs between Forest Ecosystem Services in the Gan River Basin of South China

Erfu Dai, Xiaoli Wang, Jianjia Zhu and Qing Tian
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Erfu Dai: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Xiaoli Wang: Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Jianjia Zhu: College of Horticulture Science and Technology, Hebei Normal University of Science and Technology, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
Qing Tian: Department of Computational Social Science, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-19

Abstract: Forest ecosystem services are intrinsically linked. We design a spatially explicit approach to quantify and analyze the co-benefits and trade-offs between the main forest ecosystem services. Our goal is to develop criteria for forest management that include ecosystem service interactions. Chinese fir and pine plantations provide the largest portion of the overall ecosystem services currently provided. They are volume stock and water yield service hotspots, but these have negative effects on soil retention and carbon storage, causing environmental problems. The natural forests (broad-leaf and bamboo forests) are carbon storage and volume stock hotspots and show the lowest erosion modulus. Thus, their protection, combined with expanding the plantation area under forest management should be considered in order to increase ecosystem service synergies. In contrast, an increased area of broad-leaf plantations reduces water yield service due to their lower water production capacity, in comparison with plantations of fast-growing species. Our study shows that the inclusion of ecosystem services as part of forest management could provide opportunities for optimal allocation of forest resources and sustainable utilization. Management based only on economically beneficial ecosystem services can be detrimental to the forest ecosystem and can cause environmental problems.

Keywords: ecosystem service; InVEST model; trade-off; forest plantation; Southern China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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