| Under the background of growth-supremacism,the large-scale of urbanization throughout the world,especially in developing countries such as China are becoming major challenges for sustainable development,likely creating negative consequences for biodiversity and local climate change and causing the loss of ecological land and the degradation of ecosystem.A series of effective containment policies supported by smart growth approaches has been prove to promote compact growth of built-up area,however,how to correctly protect land resources with high ecological value from rapid urban sprawl and expansion is a matter of dispute in the fields of city and regional planning,urban geography,and landscape ecology.Although ecosystem services(ESs)has emerged to fill the gap of human-environmental intersection,it has not been widely used to urban growth boundary(UGB)establishment.Furthermore,most studies fail to understand the co-benefits and trade-off of different ESs groups that could provide valuable inputs for urban policy maker and planners aiming to achieve ecological resilience for UGB scenario planning.To respond to these critical issues,a comprehensive understanding of the relationship and interaction between ESs and UGB in the context of land use and cover change(LUCC)is essential in building a scientific framework,which should incorporate a shift perspective from passive controlling to resilient management.The dynamic-oriented framework is developed to addresses the key question of how UGB should be established to coordinate their functions that contradict with each other,and to maintain the level of ESs for a healthy socio-ecological system with the influences of unpredictable and unexpected changes.In the framework,the UGB management is defined as an adaptive planning process and a set of actions to direct UGB based on ESs-undergoing and still retaining the same controls on function and structure while maintaining options to develop.The integrated toolbox includes LUCC monitoring,ESs assessment protocols,scenario planning schemes and experimental design guidelines.At the technical level,an ESs value-landscape ecological pattern-minimum cumulative resistance(MCR)model(ESs-MCR)is developed to integrate ESs mechanism,landscape ecology pattern identification with urban growth simulation and the corresponding establishment of UGB.The Yangtze River Delta is currently facing the problems of habitat degradation and imbalance between land supply and demand,bringing big challenges to the sustainable development.The Hangzhou Metropolitan Area(HMA)is selected as the study area.HMA has witnessed a rapid economic and population growth in the past decade and is representative of the urbanization that is occurring in the Yangtze River Delta.The high quality natural environment is under the threat of uncontrolled UGB.A case study of the HMA successfully demonstrated the application of the ESs-UGB framework and ESs-MCR model,whcih could become an increasingly important part of growth management,particularly for developing countries and regions that are exposed to environmental deterioration due to rapid urbanization.The dissertation sections are organized as below:(1)Chapter 1 generally introduces the research’s background and importance,and design the study flowchart.(2)Chapter 2 makes domestic and foreign literature review about UGB.(3)Chapter 3 deeply analyses ESs technical system based on LUCC.(4)Chapter 4 proposes the integrated framework of ESs and UGB establishment.(5)Chapter 5 constructs in details the practical ESs-MCR model of USB establishment.(6)Chapter 6 applies the theory and methodology into the case study of HMA.(7)Chapter 7 presents study findings and conclusions. |
