Impacts of urbanization-induced land-use changes on ecosystem services: A case study of the Pearl River Delta Metropolitan Region, China

Ecosystem services value has decreased rapidly caused by land use/land cover changes driven by urbanization during the past decades. Expanding urbanization not only changes the spatial distribution of areas of ecosystem service demand but it also changes the potential functions of ecosystem services. It is necessary to undertake a quantitative analysis of historical changes in land use/land cover in the context of the urban land sprawl to better understand existing relationships between ecological services and land use/land cover change. The methodology for this study was derived from an established knowledge base on the importance of land use/land cover types for the supply of each of nine identified ecosystem services extracted from a review of the literature. We selected the Pearl River Delta as the object of our study and used a land-use dataset entailing a resolution of 100 m to analyze the land use/land cover change trends and the values of ecosystem services in this region from 1990 to 2015. Furthermore, we compiled a summary of changes in the values of ecosystem services caused by changes in land use/land cover. We found that the change trend of land use/land cover in the Pearl River Delta, which is dominated by forests, reflected a highly dynamic context. Construction land increased from 2909.77 km2 to 7486.89 km2 over the study period. The total value of ecosystem services increased by 4.5 × 1021 seJ during the period 1990–2015. Individual ecosystem services that contributed the greatest value were hydrological regulation, climate regulation, and soil formation and retention. In light of our findings, we developed a matrix of ecosystem service values in relation to land use transitions and explored its policy implications for ecosystem management. This matrix can help decision makers to better understand tradeoffs between ecosystem services caused by land use/land cover changes.