Spatiotemporal changes, trade-offs, and synergistic relationships in ecosystem services provided by the Aral Sea Basin
Chen C.L. Chen X. Qian J. Hu Z. Liu J. Xing X. Yimamaidi D. Zhakan Z. Sun J. Wei S.
December 2021PeerJ Inc.
PeerJ
2021#9
Intense human activities in the Aral Sea Basin have changed its natural distribution of land use. Although they provide certain economic benefits, these anthropogenic influences have led to the rapid shrinkage of the Aral Sea, severely affecting the regions ecosystem. However, the spatiotemporal variability of the Aral Sea Basins Ecosystem Service Values (ESVs) is not well understood. In this study, we used 300- meter resolution land use maps from 1995, 2005, and 2015 and the Patch-generating Land Use Simulation (PLUS) model to predict the future land use patterns of the Aral Sea Basin in 2025. Simultaneously, we divided the Aral Sea Basin into three regions (upstream, midstream, and downstream) and evaluated the dynamic responses of their ESVs to Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes. The changes in the types of ecosystem services provided by the Aral Sea Basin, their trade-off, and synergistic relationships were analyzed by weighting their associations. The results showed that from 1995 to 2025, the grassland, urban, and cropland areas in the Aral Sea Basin will expand rapidly, while the areas covered by water bodies will shrink rapidly, causing a total loss of 31.97 billion USD. The downstream loss of 27.79 billion USD of the total amount is mainly caused by the conversion of water bodies to bare land. The ESVs of the middle region will increase by 6.81 billion USD, mainly due to the large amount of water extracted from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Rivers in the middle regions of the Aral Sea Basin that are used to reclaim cultivated land and expand urban areas. The ESVs and areas experiencing land use changes in the upper regions are relatively small. At the same time, our results show that biodiversity, food production, and water regulation are the major ecosystem service functions, and account for 79.46% of the total ESVs. Of the ecosystem service relationships in the Aral Sea Basin, synergy accounts for 55.56% of the interactions, with a fewer amount of trade-off exchanges. This synergy mainly exists in the relationships involving water regulation, waste treatment and recreation, and culture and tourism. We propose protection measures that will coordinate eco- environmental protection efforts with socioeconomic development in the region in order to achieve the United Nations sustainable development goals.
Aral Sea basin , Ecosystem services , LULC change , PLUS model , Trade-off and synergy
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State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China
Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia, CAS, Urumqi, China
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Key Laboratory of GIS, RS Application Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Urumqi, China
TripleSAI Technology, Shenzhen, China
Kazahk Agro Technical University Named Saken Seifullin, Nur-sultan, Kazakhstan
State Key Laboratory of Desert and Oasis Ecology
Research Center for Ecology and Environment of Central Asia
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
Key Laboratory of GIS
TripleSAI Technology
Kazahk Agro Technical University Named Saken Seifullin
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