Research On The Relationship Between Wetland Ecosystem Services And Social Well-being In The Sanjiang Plain

The relationship research between ecosystem service and social well-being is developed under the background of the sharpening contradiction between gradually declining supply function of natural ecosystem and the ever-increasing development demand for ecosystem services. This task designed to provide accurate and reliable information for the formulation and implementation of reasonable and effective environmental policies which help to improve the natural ecosystem management, the protection and sustainable utilization of ecosystem services, and the upgrade promotion of social well-being.Wetland ecosystem in the Sanjiang Plain provides many insignificant ecosystem services for the maintenance and improvement of social well-being. However, because of the negligence of the public and decision makers, the Sanjiang Plain has witnessed a massive wetland degradation and loss due to intense human activities in the last 60 years. In order to improve the future sustainable utilization of the wetland resources, this research attempts to assess the specific relationship between wetland ecosystem services and social well-being in the Sanjiang Plain base on the theory of welfare economics, ecological economics and welfare geography, and conduct value assessment of biodiversity conservation, flood control and wetland tourism these three key ecosystem services in different scales. The results this research revealed will help the public and policy makers recognize the real and huge value the wetland ecosystem possesses, and take them into the future wetland resources conservation related decisions-making account.This paper mainly includes 5 parts:1. Elaboration of the major basic theory including the related concept discrimination, domain of every theory, and the research revelation get form the theory content.2. Application of Tobit model to analyze the ways and extent of the driving factors which affect the evolution process of the wetland ecosystem during 1986~2010, and forecasting the wetland areas of 2011 and 2012 through the construction of topological relation between driving factors and wetland ecosystem by applying BP neural network.3. Qualitative analysis of the positive function of the three key wetland ecosystem services as biodiversity conservation, flood control and wetland tourism in maintenance and promotion of social well-being, and providing insights that help public and policy makers understand the severe situation of wetland ecosystem loss and the interaction ways between wetland ecosystem services and social well-being.4. Valuation of biodiversity conservation, flood control and wetland tourism in deferent scales by applying different theoretical methods of economics, geography and environmental science. Trying to provide the most intuitively scientific evidence for the future decision-making process and measurement standard compares to the different social well-being aspects.5. According to former research results, three aspects of policy advices were provided—building market-oriented wetland ecosystem management mechanism, improving public participation of wetland management and controlling and reducing the negative impact of human activities on the wetland ecosystem.The main conclusions are as follows:1. Welfare economics is the core theory of this research and the view that well-being is quantifiable constitutes the main line of this study. Utility theory of value provides a methodological support for the quantification of the relationship between wetland ecosystem service and social well-being. Ecological economics offers a new viewpoint and establishes the base argument that natural ecosystem system should be in a coordinated development state with economic system. Welfare geography provides a theoretical reference for the value assessment of every wetland ecosystem service in different scales. Sustainable development guides the policy accountability of this research after the value assessment.2. The simulated result of Tobit shows that the change processes of temperature, precipitation, population, urbanization rate, rural per capita net income, farmland area and habitation area are key factors that drive the wetland degradation during 1986~2010. The development processes of secondary industry, tertiary industry and PHGO are leading driving factors that are beneficial to the conservation of wetland ecosystem. Areas prediction results based on BP neural network show that the wetland areas in 2011 and 2012 are 98.5 and 98.4 million hectares respectively. This means if properly managed wetland ecosystem will present a gradually recovery situation.3. Biodiversity of wetland ecosystem in the Sanjiang Plain plays a major role in regional water balance maintenance, food security, climate regulation, tourism development, education and scientific research, and it almost supports all of wetland ecosystem services. Flood control has great potential in flood peak reduction, flood season deferring, river feeding, regional water balance maintenance, food security and pollutant degradation. Wetland tourism not only has significant economic benefits, but can help expand the openness of the Sanjiang Plain. It also has advanced functions for public moral literacy improvement and construction of spiritual civilization.4. Biodiversity conservation value trend calculated from the economic model indicates that under the combined effect of discount rate and change of marginal price the value curve displays an increasing first and then decreasing trend. The curve reaches a maximum after 29 years when the willingness to pay for the biodiversity conservation is 407.6 Yuan per person. The result means that as the wetland resource becomes increasingly scarce the well-being effects of biodiversity conservation becomes specially prominent, but if the wetland resource decrease to a potential threshold, people will lose their interests to invest in the biodiversity conservation. Flood control value obtained by using the method of ratio analysis and replacement cost is 1389.8~4644.7 Yuan per hectare in 2010 in the Naoli river basin and the total value is 2.42~8.08 hundred million Yuan. Meanwhile the discount rate of 5% is more appropriate for the future value analysis. The Xingkai Lake tourism value consisted of high wetland recovery, high vegetation recovery, low biodiversity and high tourism infrastructure construction is 148.9 Yuan per person by applying random parameter Logit model. The value decay process mainly occurs within 250 km and the log-linear decay function is more appropriate for the estimate of economic jurisdiction scope and the exponential decay function is more appropriate for the assessment of value decay process.5. In order to improve the sustainable utilization of wetland ecosystem service and promote the improvement of social well-being, future possible wetland ecosystem conservation related policy should take account of building market-oriented wetland ecosystem management mechanism, improving public participation of wetland management and controlling and reducing the negative impact of human activities on the wetland ecosystem.