Integrating ecosystem services, stakeholders’ perspective, and land-use scenarios to safeguard sustainability of the Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond System

Context

Optimizing landscape patterns by considering ecosystem services and human well-being is crucial for landscape sustainability research. Such optimization process shall also consider multiple stakeholders’ perspectives, interests and benefits, which remain less well investigated.

Objectives

The study aims to integrate ecosystem services and land-use scenario analysis to design sustainable landscapes. The overall goal of spatial optimization is to explore pathways towards sustainable development.

Methods

This study uses the Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond System as a representative agricultural landscape. It analyzes the spatiotemporal pattern of the landscape from 1975 to 2019. The market value method, InVEST model, and MaxEnt model are used to quantify the ecosystem services of the landscape. The analytic hierarchy process is used to set the weight of ecosystem services from the perspective of three stakeholder groups. We compare the outcomes of different scenarios and assessed through emergy yield ratio, environmental loading ratio, and environmental sustainability index.

Results

Our results indicated that: (1) The scale of the Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond system decreased significantly from 1975 to 2019. (2) Among the six major ecosystem services, the average value of water purification service was the highest, while average value of mulberry supply service was the lowest. (3) Spatial optimization of the three design objectives, ‘sustainably intensify’, ‘increase landscape multifunctionality’, and ‘restore ecological integrity’, were primarily distributed in the study area’s eastern, central, and western regions, respectively. (4) All three stakeholder-oriented scenarios showed improvements in ecological quality or agricultural output.

Conclusions

Our study incorporates viewpoints of critical, diverse stakeholders in the assessment of ecosystem services and scenario analysis to establish sustainable and culturally important agricultural landscape. The framework and methods can help minimize environmental stress on the system, balance agricultural productivity and profitability, and enhance the sustainability of agricultural landscapes.