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ORIGINAL PAPER

Response of ecosystem services to land use change in county scale of Fengqiu, Henan Province, China Fan Qindong & Ding Shengyan

Received: 14 September 2014 / Accepted: 13 February 2015 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2015

Abstract Population growth and increasing economic activities cause a large amount of natural lands to be converted into artificial areas, which is one of the most direct and important drivers of ecosystem services (ES) degradation. To protect and recover ES, governments need more information about the relationship between land use and ecosystem services. Based on GIS platform, three periods of remote sensing images were processed to be land use maps. Then we analyzed the change of ecosystem services with land use from 2002 to 2013 by mathematical models. Result showed the whole ES degenerated from 2002 to 2013; all land use types except settlements and mining sites (SMS) had a positive effect on the total ES value in the whole period; the main land use type is agricultural landscapes, but in ecological sense, it was not the best efficient land use type. Subsequently, an improved Markov model was used to predict the ES change trendy with land use in the year of 2017. These information of ES change with land use can be used for making sustainable land use plan. Keywords Land use change . Ecosystem services (ES) . Improved Markov model

Introduction Land use change is likely to be one of the most important factors effecting environmental quality all over the world (Nahuelhual et al. 2013). Environmental quality relies on ecosystem services (ES) which provide humans with a liveable environment (Lautenbach et al. 2011). These ecosystem services include food, fiber, fuel, water retention, pest control, climate regulation, waste treatment, recreation, and so on. F. Qindong : D. Shengyan (*) Shenyang, China e-mail: [email protected]

Previous literatures show that the land is the base of all terrestrial ecosystems (Luo and Zhang 2013). Over the past 50 years, human activities have led to drastic changes in land use all the world, which ultimately affects existence and function of the terrestrial ecosystem. ES degenerates and benefits which human can obtain from ES decreases year by year. Accordingly, it is important for policy makers to implement appropriate policies for sustainable land use (Kopmann and Rehdanz 2013). There are numerous literatures about ES, but applying ES to land management has not been fully realized (Logsdon and Chaubey 2013). One reason is the lack of available information about ES change with land use (Seppelt et al. 2011; Logsdon and Chaubey 2013). Many studies relied on land use data obtained from satellite images to calculate the ES value. A famous example was assessing the ES by land use data at the global scale (Costanza et al. 1997). Later, some people used this method to assess ES at regional scales (Kreuter et al. 2001; Li et al. 2007; Hu et al. 2008). Subsequently, some researchers began to use process-based models to quantify ES value (Bekele and Nickl