Page 111 - JCAU-5-2

Journal of Chinese
Architecture and Urbanism Study on ecosystem service value in Wuhan

4.2. Impact on ecosystem services of land use the ESV of which increased by 63.01%. The growing
change population and the improvement of living standards
Globally, the slump in ESV can be mainly attributed to created higher demands for agricultural production.
the declines in areas of high ESV per unit area of land, The decreasing cultivated land posed a huge threat to
such as forestry area and wetlands. With the fast economic agricultural production. Under these pressures, the
development and speedy urbanization in China, the decline municipal government of Wuhan turned their attention
in areas of forest, farmland, and grassland due to human to adjusting the agricultural structure (Zhang, 2012). The
activity, such as overgrazing and deforestation, has led to urban agriculture theory and practice were put forward.
the loss of ESV in some areas of China (Sun et al., 2016). Agriculture in Wuhan had transformed from traditional
Due to the geographical characteristics of the city of Wuhan, suburban agriculture to modern urban agriculture,
the influences of change in land use had been different. including facility agriculture, processing agriculture, leisure
Although the ESV of built-up land increased and that of agriculture, and rural tourism, and gradually formed pillar
cultivated land declined, the total ESV in Wuhan increased. industries that encompass vegetables, aquatic products,
trees, and flowers. With the increase in income, people’s
The first reason is that many areas have been converted to demand for spiritual culture became higher and higher.
forestry and wetland, and the per unit area values of these two During the study, agricultural values and rural tourism
land types are the highest, much higher than that of cultivated income increased significantly, leading to the increase of
land. Thus, the forestry area and water area increased by the ESV of provision and culture.
32.21% and 20.72% from 1996 to 2018; in turn, the ESV of
these two land use types increased by 131.58% and 111.74%, 4.3. Limitations
respectively. These land transformations are mainly attributed There are different methods to estimate the ESV, but they
to the project of ecological protection (the “Returning basically involve the multiplication of the land use area of
Farmland to Lake” in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River the corresponding biome by the unit values directly and
since 1998 and the “Grain for Green” since 1999). indirectly. So, the accuracy and reliability of the results of
The increase of ESV in Wuhan reflected the effects of ESV depend on two aspects: the accuracy of the land use
ecological protection to some extent in China. Ecological area, and the accuracy of the value of unit area. Land use is
protection has been practiced in China since the turn of regarded as one of the most important factors of ecosystem
the 21 century (Wang & Yang, 2021; Sun et al., 2016). services and has been used as a proxy through matching
st
The Yangtze River Basin had been hit in 1998 by the worst land use patterns with the ecosystem. The accuracy of
flooding in half a century due to deforestation and erosion, historical land use data provides an important base for the
causing enormous life and economic losses, especially evaluation of ESV. Most studies in China adopted the land
in Wuhan, the central city in the middle reaches of the use data collected from the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Yangtze River. This disaster stimulated the emergence of which were obtained with a man-machine interactive
the largest government-sponsored ecosystem services interpretation technique based on remote sensing images
programs in the world in 1999: the Grain for Green (GFG) of lands. However, field surveys were rarely conducted
and the Returning Farmland to Lake (RFL). By 2018, the to such data because of time and budget constraints. In
GFG had been implemented nationwide and the RFL had this study, land use data were collected from government
been practiced in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. departments in charge of land resources, which combined
Being the largest city in the region, Wuhan was regarded several years of field survey and remote sensing image
as a key pilot city of RFL. Thus, the wetland increased recognition, so they were the most authoritative and
substantially by 37.71%, contributing to a big increase in accurate land use data in China.
ESV with the highest per unit area value. Although the accuracy of land use area was improved, the
The second reason is the increase in output value accuracy of unit area value was still a problem to be solved.
per unit area from the adjustment of the agricultural In the market valuation method, the material parameters
industrial structure. Although cultivated land loss caused and the material are important, which directly affect
by urbanization usually led to a total ESV (Deng et al., the accuracy of ESV. The value of provision and cultural
2016; Jin et al., 2015; Collard & Zammit, 2015; Kong, services can be measured using market value, which can
2014), agricultural technological advances and agricultural be obtained from the local statistical yearbook. However,
industrialization structure change had become the main regulation and supporting services are not marketed goods
force to promote the growth of agriculture and agricultural and services, but public goods or common pool resources,
production (Cao & Nie, 2021; Xiang & Mao, 2016). Thus, thus direct market valuation methods are often not the
although the area of cultivated land decreased by 28.73%, best assessment method, and substitutable market method

Volume 5 Issue 2 (2023) 16 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0427