Biodiversity is the basis of ecosystem services (ESs), and the two are closely related. Earlier studies have assessed the relationship between biodiversity and ESs at the regional or watershed scale, but there are still gaps in the research on the relationship between biodiversity and ESs at pixel scale.
Researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) and their collaborators pioneered a pixel-scale matching degree analysis framework to quantify endangered plant diversity (EPD) and ESs in Xishuangbanna.
By utilizing the maximum entropy (MaxEnt) and Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) models, the researchers created a spatial matching degree index of high-resolution with 30 m × 30 m pixel size. Using the framework, they modeled and depicted the spatial matching degree index of EPD and ESs in Xishuangbanna. The matching degree was classified into low-low, low-high, high-low, and high-high four types.
They found that there was a mismatch relationship between the endangered plant diversity and ecosystem services in more than 70% of areas. Under the influence of altitude and land use/land cover (LULC) type, the matching degree of EPD and ESs showed obvious spatial heterogeneity.
In low-altitude areas in the south of Xishuangbanna, EPD and ESs mainly showed mismatch, while high-altitude areas in the west had a better match. In natural forest, the main land cover, EPD and ESs showed high-high match and its areal proportion was much larger than that of rubber plantation, tea plantation, and cropland.
"Conservation priority should be given to the areas showing a low-low match between EPD and ESs, indicative of potential ecological vulnerability,” said BAI Yang of XTBG.
The researchers recommended that future research and policy-making should consider both biodiversity and ecosystem services, along with the complex interactions between them.
"The pixel-scale spatial matching degree analysis framework developed in this study for EPD and ESs provides high-resolution maps with 30 m × 30 m pixel size, which can support the implementation of ecological protection measures and policy formulation, and has a wide range of applicability,” said BAI Yang.
The study was published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research and partly supported by the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
Contact
BAI Yang Ph.D Principal Investigator
Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: baiyang@xtbg.ac.cn
Published: 16 August 2023
