Location Choice For Priority Protected Areas Based On Ecosystem Services

With the increasing of economy developing and human demand for natural resources,ecosystem has suffered severe damage.Heavy smog,water resource shortage,frequent extreme climate and other phenomena,are all warnings about the imbalances between human and nature development.Undoubtedly,human have got the consequences for their behaviors.Regions with favorable natural condition,abundant natural resources and pretty fine ecosystem are selected as nature reserve to implement protection and supervision.Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region,located in the northwestern of China,has achieved rapid development in economy since the implementation of the western development strategy.However,accompanied with the improvement of economy,a series of ecological problems occurred,such as soil erosion,desertification and heavier smog.Hence,establishing priority conservation areas in Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region is of great significance to protect ecological environment and maintain ecological balance.The research contents of this paper mainly include:(1)Valuing cultural ecosystem services of Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region.After doing questionnaire,the results are imported into SolVES to calculate cultural services and get recreation and aesthetic services separately in Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region.(2)Calculating the value of provision services(water yield)and regulating services(carbon sequestration and soil conservation).The value of several ecosystem services obtained through combining with natural and human resources in Guanzhong-Tianshui.(3)Conservation priority setting.Comprehensively considering cultural,provision and regulating services in Guanzhong-Tianshui,11 scenarios are set by OWA to obtain the location of protected area under each scenario.Eventually,the priority conservation areas is confirmed by contrasting protective efficiency of five ecosystem services under different scenarios.Conclusions can be drawn according to this study:(1)Aesthetic service levels differ greatly in Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region.Qinling mountains area,middle-east area and areas around Xi'an have higher level relatively.As for recreation service levels,areas with high values are few and mainly located in Xi'an city and fragmented region of east,decreasing from east to west in general.(2)There are also great differences in soil conservation in Guanzhong-Tianshui.Dividing according to land use types,forest has the greatest values of soil conservation;according to location,the values are highest in northern Qinling and lowest in middle-east.The distribution of NPP is similar to soil conservation with highest in forest and lowest in middle-east.In addition,water yield differs from area to area in Guanzhong-Tianshui with the trend of low in the west and high in the east.Water yield is lower in the east and north and higher in the east.The lowest water yield is 90.4972mm and the highest is 826.232mm.Although water yield is not closely linked with land use types compared with NPP and soil conservation,it's obvious that water yield is lower in city and higher in grain land.(3)Nature conservation distribute centrally.Priority conservation areas under 11 scenarios mainly distribute in the north of Qinling,Shangluo,the border of Tianshui and Baoji,part of Xianyang and Tongchuan and the northeast of Weinan.Tianshui,in the northwest of Guanzhong-Tianshui,has least reserves and is unsuitable to establish nature reserves.(4)It's discovered that protective efficiency for one or several ecosystem services in priority conservation areas under 11 scenarios have varied.Concretely,the second scenario has the optimal protective efficiency,and the value of NPP,soil conservation,water yield,aesthetic and recreation services are separately 1.315?2.458?1.018?1.414 and 1.079.The sixth scenario has the highest efficiency for NPP with the value of 1.437;the second scenario has the highest efficiency for soil conservation with the value of 2.458;the second scenario has the highest efficiency for water yield with the value of 1.018;the fifth scenario has the highest efficiency for aesthetic services with the value of 1.745;the tenth scenario has the highest efficiency for recreation with the value of 1.442.In this paper,cultural services is taken into consideration as a reference to select priority conservation areas combining with nature and human factors.Basing on cultural ecosystem services,established conservation can not only protect natural environment traditionally but also protect cultural services.It plays an extreme important role in exerting the vital location of Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region to select priority conservation areas under several scenarios.Meanwhile,this paper can also provide a reference to select Priority conservation areas as a related decision maker.