Does land use change decline the regional ecosystem health maintenance? Case study in subtropical coastal region, Fuzhou, China.

Abstract

Regional environmental management aims to maintain or improve regional ecosystem health (REH) and prevent its degradation over time. In the context of rapid urbanization and global sustainability over the last two decades, has land use change resulted in a deterioration of REH? By using the improved REH framework model as Pressure-Vigor-Organization-Resilience-Service (P-VOR-S), this paper proposed Regional Ecosystem Health Maintenance (REHM) as a dynamic quantitative indicator of REH, and detected REHM as well as its response to land use change in the coastal city of Fuzhou, China during 2003-2018. The results showed that: (1) During 2003-2018, the average REH gradually decreased in spite of the 62.50-67.55% area coverage of the REH "well" level. The REHM "maintenance" level covered 9764.69 km² (83.74%), while the REHM "degradation" and "improvement" covered only 1485.17 km² (12.74%) and 410.99 km² (3.52%), respectively. (2) The REHM "degradation" in Fuzhou was predominantly caused by the conversion of forest to cultivated land and cultivated land to construction land, as well as the conversion of forest and water to construction land. (3) The REHM map highlighted the degraded areas as hotspots for environmental management concerns, and the area of REHM "degradation" or "improvement" could be served as key indicator for regional environmental management and spatial land planning.