{"title":"Impacts of Societal Development on the Evolution of Ecosystem Services in the Heihe River Basin, China","authors":"Shuanglei Wu, Yongping Wei, Yukun Li, Zhixiang Lu","doi":"10.34133/ehs.0008","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Human activities through changes in land and water use have led to increase in provision ecosystem services (ESs) but decrease in some regulating, supporting, and cultural services in the past thousands of years. The impact of land and water use on different types of ESs has been extensively studied, but it has not been directly linked to its societal drivers, thus failed to explain the societal root cause of ES degradation. This paper aims to examine the impacts of 3 generic societal drivers: societal value, institutional governance, and science and technology development on the evolution of ESs in the Heihe River Basin, China since 2000 years ago. Water provision, food provision, groundwater maintenance, climate regulation, and environmental flow maintenance were examined as the major ESs. Content analysis method was used to track the change of the 3 societal drivers from various textual documents. It was found that there were strong trade-off relationships between food provision and groundwater maintenance in midstream and the environmental flow maintenance services in downstream. The slow-changing and independently developed societal drivers failed to adaptively respond to the increasing food provision demands while addressing the significant decrease in groundwater and environmental flows. It is concluded that rational water (re)allocation and use are the prerequisites of balanced development of different categories of ESs and linking societal development to the benefits humans obtain from ecosystems is the prerequisite for sustainable ES management.","PeriodicalId":54216,"journal":{"name":"Ecosystem Health and Sustainability","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecosystem Health and Sustainability","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.34133/ehs.0008","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Human activities through changes in land and water use have led to increase in provision ecosystem services (ESs) but decrease in some regulating, supporting, and cultural services in the past thousands of years. The impact of land and water use on different types of ESs has been extensively studied, but it has not been directly linked to its societal drivers, thus failed to explain the societal root cause of ES degradation. This paper aims to examine the impacts of 3 generic societal drivers: societal value, institutional governance, and science and technology development on the evolution of ESs in the Heihe River Basin, China since 2000 years ago. Water provision, food provision, groundwater maintenance, climate regulation, and environmental flow maintenance were examined as the major ESs. Content analysis method was used to track the change of the 3 societal drivers from various textual documents. It was found that there were strong trade-off relationships between food provision and groundwater maintenance in midstream and the environmental flow maintenance services in downstream. The slow-changing and independently developed societal drivers failed to adaptively respond to the increasing food provision demands while addressing the significant decrease in groundwater and environmental flows. It is concluded that rational water (re)allocation and use are the prerequisites of balanced development of different categories of ESs and linking societal development to the benefits humans obtain from ecosystems is the prerequisite for sustainable ES management.
期刊介绍:
Ecosystem Health and Sustainability publishes articles on advances in ecology and sustainability science, how global environmental change affects ecosystem health, how changes in human activities affect ecosystem conditions, and system-based approaches for applying ecological science in decision-making to promote sustainable development. Papers focus on applying ecological theory, principles, and concepts to support sustainable development, especially in regions undergoing rapid environmental change. Papers on multi-scale, integrative, and interdisciplinary studies, and on international collaborations between scientists from industrialized and industrializing countries are especially welcome.
Suitable topics for EHS include:
• Global, regional and local studies of international significance
• Impact of global or regional environmental change on natural ecosystems
• Interdisciplinary research involving integration of natural, social, and behavioral sciences
• Science and policy that promote the use of ecological sciences in decision making
• Novel or multidisciplinary approaches for solving complex ecological problems
• Multi-scale and long-term observations of ecosystem evolution
• Development of novel systems approaches or modeling and simulation techniques
• Rapid responses to emerging ecological issues.