Attribution of climate change and human activities to spatiotemporal changes of ecological service value in Yunnan Province of China

Abstract

Quantifying the influence of climate change and human activities on spatiotemporal changes of regional ecological service value (ESV) can provide key information for regional ecosystem protection. However, few studies have distinguished the contributions of climate change and human activities to the total ESV. In this study, Yunnan Province in Southwest China with high biodiversity and ESV was selected as a representative region for the attribution analysis of ESV changes. The Carnegie-Ames Stanford Approach (CASA) was used to calculate the vegetation net primary productivity (NPP), and improved equivalent factor method was used to calculate ESVs of different ecosystem service functions directly from NPP. Then, the multi-factor attribution analysis method was used to quantify the contribution rates of climate change and human activities to changes in ESV. Results show that the ESV in Yunnan Province increased by 12.9 % in 2000–2019 compared to 1980–1999 without considering economic development. Land use and cover change (LUCC) is the main cause for the increase in ESV with the contribution rate of 92.3 %, while that of climate change is only 7.7 %. Major components of ESV change are ESV changes in forests, grasslands, and farmland, which are all mainly caused by LUCC with the contribute rates of over 80 %. ESVs in different cities differ greatly, where the ESV and ESV per unit area in Pu'er City are 5.3 and 2.6 times as those in Zhaotong City, respectively. LUCC is also the main cause of ESV changes in all cities, with contributions rates generally exceeding 80 %. When considering economic development, the ESV in Yunnan has increased by 336.2 % in these two periods. Contribution rate of economic development to ESV increase in Yunnan is 80.3 %, while that of climate change and LUCC is only 19.7 %. The speed of ecological construction in Yunnan Province is far slower than that of economic development, and appropriate measures should be taken to improve the ecological services in the future.