Threshold Effects between Ecosystem Services and Natural and Social Drivers in Karst Landscapes

Abstract

It has been shown that there are thresholds of influence on the response of ecosystem services to their drivers, and the range of drivers that provide high levels of ecosystem services can be delineated through thresholds. However, due to the spatial heterogeneity of landscapes in karst regions, the results of ecosystem service threshold studies in non-karst regions may not be applicable to karst regions. This study explores the threshold effects between ecosystem services in karst landscapes and their natural and social drivers. It is shown that there are nonlinear constraints between them, and different critical thresholds exist for different kinds of ecosystem services. The main thresholds for water supply services include the slope (43.64°) and relief amplitude (331.60 m); for water purification services, they include relief amplitude (147.05 m) and distance to urban land (DTUL) (32.30 km); for soil conservation services, they include the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) (0.80) and nighttime light intensity (43.58 nW∙cm−2∙sr−1); the main thresholds for biodiversity maintenance services include population density (1481.06 person∙km−2) and distance to urban land (DTUL) (32.80 km). This enables regional ecological conservation planning based on different threshold ranges corresponding to different ecosystem services to meet the different needs of different decision makers.