Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Driving Factors of Ecosystem Services Value in the Hexi Regions, Northwest China

Abstract

Land-use and climate changes can exert significant influences on ecosystem services value (ESV). However, interactions of these drivers in shaping the ESV remain unclear in arid inland regions. In this study, dynamic changes in ESV from 1980 to 2050 in the Hexi Regions were evaluated by integrating land-use change and other environmental factors using the equivalent factor method, local spatial autocorrelation analysis, and a geographical detector. Our results showed that the spatial distribution of ESV increased in the northwest to southeast regions of the study area. The area-weighted mean ESV of the Qilian Mountains (i.e., mountainous regions) was about 10.27–11.97-fold higher than that of the Hexi Corridor (i.e., plain regions) during the study period. As for the ecological protection (EP) scenario, from 2020 to 2050, the total ESV increase was estimated to be larger than that under the natural development (ND) and rapid urbanization (RU) scenarios. Particularly, under the EP scenario, by 2050, the enhancement of ESV in the Qilian Mountains mainly resulted from the expansion of forests, shrubs, grasslands, and water. The geographical detector indicated that LUCC was the dominant driver of the spatial heterogeneity of ESV, followed by climate and vegetation. Specifically, LUCC explained 35.39% and 80.06% of the total variation in the ESV for the Hexi Corridor and the Qilian Mountains, respectively. Natural drivers, such as temperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil organic carbon, were assumed to exert larger impacts on ESV in the mountainous regions than in the corridor. By contrast, anthropogenic factors played more significant roles in altering the ESV patterns for the corridor. Our research highlighted the importance of ecological protection in improving ESV in the future and emphasized that the difference in driving factors of ESV between mountainous and plain regions should be considered in terms of the ecosystem management for the inland regions of northwestern China.