TY - JOUR

T1 - An ecological perspective for understanding regional integration based on ecosystem service budgets, bundles, and flows

T2 - A case study of the Jinan metropolitan area in China

AU - Li, Kai

AU - Hou, Ying

AU - Andersen, Peter Stubkjær

AU - Xin, Ruhong

AU - Rong, Yuejing

AU - Skov-Petersen, Hans

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Regional integration can contribute to co-occurring benefits of different parts of an urban agglomeration by managing these parts as a whole. However, current regional integration mainly focuses on the socioeconomic rather than the ecological dimension. To interpret regional ecological integration, we firstly selected six typical ecosystem services (ESs) to represent ecological benefits that potentially need to be improved by ecological integration for further analysis. Then we used ES budgets, bundles, and flows to investigate the potential, basic analysis unit, and occurring manners of ecological integration, respectively. Our results show that supply-demand mismatches were observed in all the ES types. Meanwhile, coexisting ES surpluses and deficits on the town scale were found in supporting biodiversity, soil retention, water yield, green space recreation, and crop yield, which indicates that their supply-demand mismatches can be mitigated with ecological integration. Furthermore, all the towns were classified into five spatial clusters with distinct ES budget bundles, which acted as the basic analysis unit of ecological integration. ES flows with three flow characteristic types were observed between different clusters, and all the clusters had ES provider-beneficiary relationships with each other. Based on the ES approach, we provided an ecological perspective for understanding regional integration, which has the potential to promote regional ecological sustainability.

AB - Regional integration can contribute to co-occurring benefits of different parts of an urban agglomeration by managing these parts as a whole. However, current regional integration mainly focuses on the socioeconomic rather than the ecological dimension. To interpret regional ecological integration, we firstly selected six typical ecosystem services (ESs) to represent ecological benefits that potentially need to be improved by ecological integration for further analysis. Then we used ES budgets, bundles, and flows to investigate the potential, basic analysis unit, and occurring manners of ecological integration, respectively. Our results show that supply-demand mismatches were observed in all the ES types. Meanwhile, coexisting ES surpluses and deficits on the town scale were found in supporting biodiversity, soil retention, water yield, green space recreation, and crop yield, which indicates that their supply-demand mismatches can be mitigated with ecological integration. Furthermore, all the towns were classified into five spatial clusters with distinct ES budget bundles, which acted as the basic analysis unit of ecological integration. ES flows with three flow characteristic types were observed between different clusters, and all the clusters had ES provider-beneficiary relationships with each other. Based on the ES approach, we provided an ecological perspective for understanding regional integration, which has the potential to promote regional ecological sustainability.

KW - Ecosystem service

KW - Ecosystem service bundle

KW - Regional development

KW - Spatial cluster

KW - Supply-demand

U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114371

DO - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114371

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 34953229

AN - SCOPUS:85121720599

VL - 305

JO - Journal of Environmental Management

JF - Journal of Environmental Management

SN - 0301-4797

M1 - 114371

ER -