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Journal of Geographical Sciences >

2018 , Vol. 28 >Issue 10: 1385 - 1398

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1551-4

Orginal Article

Spatio-temporal variations of the flood mitigation service of ecosystem under different climate scenarios in the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River Basin, China

  • WANG Pengtao , 1, 2 ,
  • ZHANG Liwei , 1* ,
  • LI Yingjie 3 ,
  • JIAO Lei 1 ,
  • WANG Hao 1 ,
  • YAN Junping 1 ,
  • LÜ Yihe 4 ,
  • FU Bojie 4
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  • 1. Department of Geography, School of Geography and Tourism of Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, China
  • 2. School of Tourism & Research Institute of Human Geography, Xi’an International Studies University, Xi’an 710128, China ;
  • 3. Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48823, USA
  • 4. State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, CAS, Beijing 100085, China
*Corresponding author: Zhang Liwei (1985-), PhD and Associate Professor, specialized in landscape ecology and ecosystem services. E-mail:

Author: Wang Pengtao (1988-), PhD, specialized in climate change and ecosystem services. E-mail:

Received date: 2017-05-15

  Accepted date: 2017-12-08

  Online published: 2018-10-25

Supported by

Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China, No.2017JQ4009

National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41601182, No.41471097

National Social Science Foundation of China, No.14AZD094

Key Project of Chinese Ministry of Education, No.15JJD790022

The National Key Research and Development Plan of China, No.2016YFC0501601

The Science and Technology Service Network Initiative Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.KFJ-STS-ZDTP-036

Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University, No.GK201703053

Copyright

Journal of Geographical Sciences, All Rights Reserved
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Abstract

Extreme rainstorm and the subsequent flood increasingly threaten the security of human society and ecological environment with aggravation of global climate change and anthropogenic activity in recent years. Therefore, the research on flood mitigation service (FMS) of ecosystem should be paid more attention to mitigate the risk. In this paper, we assessed FMS in the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River (URHR), China from 2000 to 2014 using the Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) model, and further simulated the future FMS under two climate scenarios (in 2020 and 2030). The results reveal that the FMS presented a fluctuating rising trend in the URHR from 2000 to 2014. The FMS in southern URHR was higher than that of northern URHR, and the change rate of FMS in the upstream of URHR (western URHR) was higher than the downstream of URHR (eastern URHR). The future FMS under scenarios of Medium-High Emissions (A2) and Medium-Low Emissions (B2) will decrease consistently. As land use/land cover changes in the URHR are negligible, we concluded that the change in FMS was mainly driven by climate change, such as storm and runoff. Our study highlights that climate scenarios analysis should be incorporated into the assessment of hydrologic-related services to facilitate regional water resources management.

Key words： ecosystem services; scenario analysis; climate change; SCS-CN model; Hanjiang River

Cite this article

WANG Pengtao , ZHANG Liwei , LI Yingjie , JIAO Lei , WANG Hao , YAN Junping , LÜ Yihe , FU Bojie . Spatio-temporal variations of the flood mitigation service of ecosystem under different climate scenarios in the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River Basin, China[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2018 , 28(10) : 1385 -1398 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-018-1551-4

1 Introduction

Hydrological services are critical for sustaining ecosystem structure, ecosystem process and region ecological environment security (Castello and Macedo, 2016; Sun et al., 2016). These services can be divided into four categories: diverted and in situ water supply, flood mitigation service, water-related cultural services, and water-associated supporting services (Brauman et al., 2007), among which the flood mitigation service (FMS) has drawn much attention because of the increasingly intensification of global climate change and extreme storm event in recent years (Barbedo et al., 2014; Watson et al., 2016; Sonter et al., 2017). FMS is one of the key flood regulation services (Bagstad et al., 2011, 2014; Sturck et al., 2014), which denotes the capability of ecosystem to reduce and retain floodwater to avoid flood damages to downstream populations by vegetation, soil and other components of ecosystem (Carvalho-Santos et al., 2016; Watson et al., 2016; Sonter et al., 2017). Compared with human-dominated water conservancy project, the natural ecosystem plays a more positive and effective role in flood mitigation (Sturck et al., 2014; Barth and Döll, 2016), and has less negative impacts on biodiversity protection and ecological environment (Zhang et al., 2010; Sturck et al., 2014; Keesstra et al., 2018).
In fact, flood mitigation is a comprehensive hydrological process, which is composed of flood interception by canopy, litter, flood storage in soil, and storm runoff, etc. (Zhang et al., 2010; Barth and Döll, 2016; Kim et al., 2016). Thus, vegetation and soil, even artificial land in terrestrial ecosystem, all have the potential to mitigate the flood (Nedkov and Burkhard, 2012). However, most of the previous studies focused on the FMS of wetland and soil (Marsooli et al., 2016; Ouyang et al., 2016; Pappalardo et al., 2016; Watson et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2017), but few assessed the whole natural ecosystem. For instance, Ouyang et al. (2016) adopted the empirical method between the available water storage capacity and area to assess the flood mitigation capacity of wetland. Jiang et al. (2007) estimated the water subtraction quantity of wetland soils within the Momoge Reserve. As far as we know, Nelson et al. (2009) adopted the InVEST model to assess FMS in the terrestrial ecosystem at a fine spatial resolution, however, data availability of single storm event limits the application of this model to large-scale areas. Zhang et al. (2010) and Kim et al. (2016) grouped these hydrological process as interception, stem flow, litter interception and water storage, whereas, it is very complicated to calculate these ES and is difficult to establish precise mathematical model. Promisingly, Fu et al. (2013) developed a method to assess FMS based on watershed runoff model, i.e., the SCS-CN model (Li et al., 2015; Lin et al., 2017). This SCS-CN model takes account of multiple watershed characteristics, such as soil, land use, hydrologic condition and antecedent moisture condition (AMC), and it has great potential to evaluate FMS at a broad scale (Mishra et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2017; Lal et al., 2017). In addition, current research seldom analyzed the temporal dynamics of FMS, let alone the variations under different climate changing scenarios (Fu et al., 2015). The lacking of systematical understanding of FMS variations may weaken the decision-making for regional flood management.
In this study, the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River basin (URHR) is taken as study area. URHR is the water source of the middle route of South-to-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) in China. The study of hydrologic ecosystem services and water resources in URHR, not only concerns the local ecological water use safety and the socio-economic development, but also provides benefits for the sustainability of lower reaches of Hanjiang River and national water recipient areas of SNWTP (Chen et al., 2007; Li et al., 2016). Besides, rapid changes in land use and climate have increasingly influenced the ecosystem services (ES), therefore, it is necessary to look into the plausible future change of ES. In recent environment research, the scenarios analysis is widely adopted as a vital and effective approach providing possible descriptions of future change in climate or land use based on reasonable assumption (Feng et al., 2016; Runting et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017). The integration of these plausible and reasonable descriptions to ES research will help stakeholders better understand the processes and response mechanisms of ecosystem to environmental change and anthropogenic activity (Scholes 2016; Thom et al., 2017; Yuan et al., 2017), as well as provide scientific reference for targeted preventive measures in face of the future flood risk in URHR.
Based on the FMS model and climate change scenarios analysis, this paper aims to: (1) analyze the historical spatio-temporal variations of FMS from 2000 to 2014 and the future variations in the years of 2020 and 2030 under two climate scenarios in URHR; (2) discuss the major driving factors of FMS variations; and (3) discuss the implication of climate scenarios analysis on FMS management. This research may contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between climate change and ecosystem services (ES), and help facilitate watershed water resources management.

2 Materials and methodology

2.1 Study area

Hanjiang River is the largest branch of Yangtze River in China, and it is also the water source of the middle route of South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China (Chen et al., 2007; Li et al., 2016). The Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River basin is located between 105.85°-111.60°E and 31.02°-34.48°N, with a basin area of 62384 km2, and extends 652 km from the west to the east in Shaanxi province (Figure 1). This basin is characterized by sub-tropical monsoon climate, and precipitation concentrates in summer and autumn, with frequent storms and continuous rain (Chen et al., 2007). The average annual temperature ranges from 12°C to 18°C, and the average annual precipitation ranges from 653 to 1183 mm (Li et al., 2017; Wang et al., 2017). Topographically, the northern border of URHR is formed by the Qinling Mountains, and southern border is formed by the Daba Mountain and Micang Mountain. Hanjiang River flows through these mountains. The URHR is known as a key natural ecological zone in central China, and flood disasters frequently occur in this region, due to the natural condition (i.e., steep slopes and large river bed gradient) and subtropical humid monsoon climate. This poses great threats to the human well-being in the middle and lower reaches of Hanjiang.
Figure 1 Location and 12 sub-basins of the Upper Reaches of Hanjiang River (URHR), China. These sub-basins are Yanghe River (YR), Baohe River (BR), Xuhe River (XR), Ziwuhe River (ZR), Xunhe River (XNR), Jinqian River (JR), Danjiang River (DR), Lengshuihe River (LSR), Shuangmahe River (SR), Zhuhe River (ZHR), Yuehe River (YR), Lanhe River (LR), respectively

2.2 Datasets and methodology

2.2.1 Flood mitigation service model
Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) model, is one of the most popularmethods for evaluating the surface runoff volume in a single rain event (Mishra et al., 2012).
It accounts for watershed charac-teristics of runoff yield and has been adopted by engineers and practitioners in various regions under different climatic conditions (Yang et al., 2015; Hooshyar and Wang, 2016; Liu and Li, 2017). Integrating SCS- CN model into FMS assessment can be helpful for the spatially-explicit evaluation of storm runoff and flood mitigation magnitude in large watershed.
In the study, we apply SCS-CN model to estimate FMS in two steps:
(1) Evaluating storm runoff: the theoretical base of SCS-CN is water balance and the two basic assumptions in SCS-CN model are as follows:
\[P={{I}_{a}}+F+Q\ (1)\]
\[\frac{Q}{P-{{I}_{a}}}=\frac{F}{S}\ (2)\]
\[{{I}_{a}}=\lambda S\ (3)\]
where P represents the rainfall (mm), Ia represents the initial abstraction (mm), F represents cumulative infiltration (mm), Q represents the direct surface runoff (mm), S represents the potential maximum retention (mm) and λ represents the initial abstraction coefficient (generally, λ is set as 0.2 in this work).
Surface runoff can be calculated as follows:
\[Q=\left\{ \begin{matrix} \frac{{{(P-{{I}_{a}})}^{2}}}{(P-{{I}_{a}}+S)}, & P\ge {{I}_{a}} \\ 0, & P<{{I}_{a}} \\ \end{matrix} \right.\ (4)\]
\[S=\frac{25400}{CN}-254\ (5)\]
Particularly, substituting Ps (representing storm rain) into formulas SCS-CN model, Qs (representing storm runoff) can be calculated.
\[\left\{ \begin{matrix} {{Q}_{s}}=\frac{{{({{P}_{s}}-{{I}_{a}})}^{2}}}{({{P}_{s}}-{{I}_{a}}+S)}, & {{P}_{s}}\ge {{I}_{a}} \\ {{Q}_{s}}=0, & {{P}_{s}}<{{I}_{a}} \\ \end{matrix} \right.\ (6)\]
In the model, CN is a comprehensive variable that accounts for hydrologic soil group (HSG), land use and antecedent moisture condition (AMC), and the parameters can be looked up from the table in the National Engineering Handbook (USDA, 1985). The table of CN value was built up in ArcGIS 10.2. The land use data of the URHR in 2000, 2005 and 2010 were selected to represent the land use condition in each period: 2000-2004, 2005-2009 and 2010-2014 respectively.
(2) The flood mitigation service can be evaluated by using water balance equation (Fu et al., 2013):
\[{{F}_{M}}={{P}_{s}}-{{Q}_{s}}\ (7)\]
where FM represents flood mitigation (mm). Substituting Ps and Qs in Eq. (6) into Eq. (7), the FM can be put as follows:
\[{{F}_{M}}=\left( {{S}_{ev}}-\frac{{{({{S}_{ev}}-0.25)}^{2}}}{{{S}_{ev}}+0.85} \right)\times storm\_days\ (8)\]
where Sev represents single rainstorm event (mm), storm_days represents the storm days per year.
2.2.2 Climate change scenarios setting
Scenarios are stories that describe possible futures about socio-economic, technological and environmental conditions, etc. (Moss et al., 2010). Applied in climate change research, this approach can promote understanding of complex interactions of climate conditions, human activities and ecosystems (Moss et al., 2010; Liang et al., 2017), and has great value in better providing references for targeted options for the regional decision-making and ecosystem management (Fu et al., 2015). General Circulation Models (GCMs) are the most popular methods in climate change research, studying the future scenarios and dynamic mechanism of climate change through mathematical equations. However, the GCM outputs are too coarse for the regional climate study, so we downscaled the model to better fit for our study (Yang et al., 2017). In this study, the automated regression-based statistical downscaling tool (ASD) was chosen to set the climate change scenarios in URHR (Hessami et al., 2008). The model is widely used because of its preferable simulation effect and simple operation (Guo et al., 2012; Lu et al., 2016). In the simulation process of ASD, three forms of data were used:
(1) Daily precipitation data (from 2000 to 2014) of meteorological stations in the URHR. This dataset was derived from National Meteorological Information Center of China Meteorological Administration (http://data.cma.cn/). The storm events were selected from the meteorological data.
(2) NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data at the spatial scale of 1°×1° from 1991 to 2001. The data were derived from National Centers for Environmental Prediction and National Center for Atmospheric Research.
(3) Climate change scenarios (from 1961 to 2099) of the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3) output data under Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 and B2 scenarios at the spatial scale of 3.75°×2.5° (Johns et al., 2003). This dataset was derived from Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. The A2 scenario represents a Medium-High Emissions world with more rapid population growth but less rapid economic growth, and B2 scenario represents a Medium-Low Emissions world with slower population growth, economic and social sustainable development (Nakicenovic et al., 2000; Walz et al., 2014). ASD method was applied to obtain the future storm runoff and FMS in 2020 and 2030, representing relatively near future, in which the FMS can be comparable with the current situation and targeted preventive measures can be carried out timely.
Before setting future climate scenarios of precipitation and FMS, the model performance had been evaluated with the calibration process in the period of 1961-1975 and validation process in the period of 1976-1990. Specifically, in evaluation process, the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient (NS) and the coefficient of determination (R2) had been used to evaluate the residual between measured precipitation data and the simulation results, with the value 0.76 (NS) and 0.78 (R2) in calibration period, 0.83 (NS) and 0.84 (R2) in validation period, which indicated the model is considered acceptable and accurate in local area (Lu et al., 2016). Thus, with the output from ASD model, the future storm, storm runoff and FMS can be obtained.

3 Results

3.1 Temporal and spatial variations of flood mitigation service

During the period of 2000-2014, the annual mean FMS in the URHR was 101.93 mm. The annual FMS ranged from 34.42 mm in 2001 to 203.98 mm in 2011, with a fluctuating rising trend of 1.97 mm/yr. This change trend was consistent with the results of China’s first national ecosystem assessment (2000-2010) (Ouyang et al., 2016). Besides, during the 15-year period, there were evident fluctuating inter-annual variations of FMS, and the FMS reversed abruptly in 2011. Thus, the change of FMS could be divided into two phases: in the first phase, FMS continuously increased at a rate of 6.20 mm/yr from 2000 to 2010, while subsequently, FMS dramatically decreased at a rate of -48.99 mm/yr from 2011 to 2014.
Spatial pattern of FMS revealed an apparent gradation from southwest to northeast (Figure 2a). In the southern URHR, the values of FMS were high, especially in the LSR, SR and ZHR region, where the FMS values were above 130 mm. By contrast, the values of FMS in the north were far less, and the values in the DR, BR, XNR and JR were less than 80 mm (Figure 2c). In most regions of the URHR, FMS had increased since 2000, while in the northwestern, DR was the only area where FMS decreased. Meanwhile, the change rates of FMS in the west and the east of the URHR were significantly different (Figure 2b). Specifically, the change rates of FMS in the eastern URHR (downstream of URHR) were relatively low, for example, the change rates in DR, JR and XNR were under 4 mm/yr, while in the western URHR (upstream of URHR) the change rates were relatively high, the values in YR, BR and LSR were all above 10mm/yr (P < 0.05).
Figure 2 Spatial patterns of annual FMS (a), change rate (b), the significant level (c) and sub-basins distribution of annual average (d) and change rate (e) of flood mitigation service in the URHR. In (d) and (e), WR represents the whole region (URHR).

3.2 Flood mitigation service in different climate scenarios

In the climate scenarios of A2 and B2 in 2020 and 2030, the mean FMS (FMSA2-2020, FMSA2-2030, FMSB2-2020 and FMSB2-2030) will be 82.15, 63.43, 64.37 and 60.97 mm, respectively. In comparison with historical annual mean FMS (101.93 mm), the FMS in the four scenarios will all decrease. Besides, the future FMS (FMSA2-2020, FMSA2-2030, FMSB2-2020 and FMSB2-2030) in each sub-basin will all be lower than the historical mean value.
Figure 3 The flood mitigation map under climate change scenarios in the URHR: A2-2020 (a), B2-2020 (b), A2-2030 (c), B2-2030 (d) and sub-basins distribution in scenarios (e). In (e), WR represents the whole region (URHR).
The FMS in the same SRES scenario varies by year: in SRES A2, the FMS in 2030 will be lower than value in 2020 in each sub-basin; in SRES B2, in upstream of URHR (YR, BR, XR, LSR and SR), FMS in 2030 (FMSB2-2030) will be higher than value in 2020 (FMSB2-2020), and in downstream of URHR, the FMS in 2030 (FMSB2-2030) will be lower than value in 2020 (FMSB2-2020). In addition, the FMS in the future years varies by SRES scenarios: in 2020, the scenario value for A2 (FMSA2-2020) will be nearly higher than value for B2 (FMSB2-2020) in each sub-basin; in 2030, the scenario value for A2 (FMSA2-2030) will be lower than value for B2 (FMSB2-2030) in upstream of URHR (YR, BR, XR, LSR and SR), and in downstream of URHR, the scenario value for A2 (FMSA2-2030) will be higher than value for B2 (FMSB2-2030).
In sum, in downstream of URHR, the future FMS will continuously decrease from 2020 to 2030 ( FMS2020>FMS2030) under the same scenarios and the future FMS will also be lower under a Medium-Low Emissions scenario (FMSB2) than a Medium-High Emissions (FMSA2) in the same year. However, the variations of scenarios value in upstream of URHR will be unstable between years or between SRES scenarios.

4 Discussion

4.1 Driving factors of the FMS variations

Land use/land cover (LULC) change and climate change are key factors that impact the runoff, consequently, influence the FMS (Piao et al., 2007; Fu et al., 2015). The LULC change has a major impact on runoff and flood mitigation processes, such as canopy interception, depression detention, infiltration, and so on. However, the LULC in the URHR showed limited change during 2000-2014 because of the mountainous environment and backward economic development. According to the LULC transfer matrix (Table 1), the land use in URHR presented little change. In terms of land use types, the woodland, artificial land (e.g., land for construction) and wetland rose gradually, while the cropland, bare land and grassland declined slowly. In general, LULC change will affect major runoff and flood mitigation processes, such as canopy interception, depression detention, infiltration, etc. However, the change in artificial land, wetland, bare land and grassland was feeble (all less than 50 km2), which limited their effect on the local FMS variations. With the implementation in ecological projects, such as “Grain for Green Project” in Qinling-Daba Mountains (Liu et al., 2016), the vegetation coverage in URHR increase gradually, thus the increasing of woodland might facilitate the increase in FMS (Fu et al., 2013). However, the relative change in woodland only occurred in the limited areas (e.g., some river basins and low hills area in URHR), being less than 1% of the whole area. As a result, during 2000-2014, the land use in URHR showed little change, and thus has little effect on local FMS variations.
Table 1 The transfer matrix of land use/land cover in URHR from 2000 to 2014 (km2)
Land cover Grassland Wetland Cropland Artificial land Bare land Woodland Decrease
Grassland 367.25 1.25 0 0 0 0 1.25
Wetland 0 328 1.25 0 6.25 0 7.5
Cropland 0 11.06 12629.19 41.81 2.44 351.38 406.69
Artificial land 0 0 0 401.69 0 0 0
Bare land 0 24.56 0 0 245.69 0 24.57
Woodland 0 0 0 0 2.5 48412.57 2.5
Increase 0 36.88 1.25 41.81 11.19 351.38 -
Net change -1.25 29.38 -405.44 41.81 -13.38 348.88 -
Relative change (%) -0.34 8.56 -3.02 10.41 -4.54 0.72 -
In addition, we compared the temporal change and spatial patterns of the storm, runoff and FMS in the URHR to assess their similarities and differences. During 2000-2014, the storm, runoff and FMS increased at rates of 0.52, 1.97 and 2.49 mm/yr, with the similar fluctuant change trends and characteristics. The FMS was highly correlated with the storm and runoff: the correlation coefficient between FMS and storm was 0.96 (P<0.01), and the correlation coefficient between FMS and runoff was 0.97 (P<0.01). Additionally, the FMS shared a similar distribution pattern with storm and runoff in change trend (see Figure 2(b), Figure 4(b) and Figure 4(c)). The change rates of FMS, storm and runoff in upstream of URHR were all higher than that in downstream of URHR. Besides, similar spatial distribution patterns of these three factors’ change rates also could be found in sub-basins distribution. As for FMS change in different SRES scenarios, we found that the FMS all showed apparent decreasing trend, which were similar to the decreasing trend of storm and runoff. The A2 and B2 scenarios are different perspectives of socio-economic situation which are set based on the deduced global greenhouse gas emission, therefore, the different scenarios lead to different variations of FMS in 2020 and 2030. However, the future FMS under scenarios of A2 and B2 in 2020 and 2030 all show decreasing trend, though they differ in the magnitude of variations.
Figure 4 Temporal variations of storm and runoff (a), spatial variations of storm change slope (b), spatial variations of runoff change slope (c), storm change slope of sub-basins (d) and runoff change slope of sub-basins (e). In (d) and (e), WR represents the Whole Region (URHR).
According to both the historical and future scenario analysis of FMS and its potential driving factors’ change, it can be concluded that the FMS in URHR was mainly determined by climate change, such as storm and runoff.

4.2 Implications of scenario analysis for mapping FMS

Ecosystem supply FMS by reducing and retaining floodwater in forest canopy, leaf litter and soil to avoid flood damages to downstream populations, and the FMS is one of the key hydrological services. However, the increasingly intensification of climate change and human activities can lead to degradation of the FMS, increasingly threatening the local water resources security and ecological stability. In FMS research, flood risk zonation can be executed according to relative risk grade of different areas, Priority Areas for protecting FMS can be designated in local area (Zhang et al., 2017), and some potential problems in regional water crisis could be prevented or mitigated in the future.
The provision of ES depends on biophysical conditions of ecosystem (Sturck et al., 2015). The ecosystem has been and will continue be increasingly influenced by anthropogenic land use change and climate change (Burkhard et al., 2012). Given this, a long-term study on the ecosystem change can help better understand the mechanism and future trend of the ES change (Li et al., 2017). For example, in this study, the FMS increased with fluctuations from 2000 to 2010, while FMS decreased dramatically from 2010 to 2013, which revealed the internal instability of ecosystem under the changing environment. Our study also found that storm rain had a significant perturbation on FMS. Thus, the analysis of historical change can help identify driving factors of FMS, and further provide theoretical basis for scenario analysis. For instance, the climate change is the main factor that influences on FMS, so the
climate scenario was chosen to simulate the future FMS. The driving forces chosen in this study are only a special example, and in general, ES is driven by multi-factor in complicated and non-linear process. To find out the dominant factors, more comprehensive methods are needed.
Scenario analysis helps stakeholders consider the possible futures change of ES. After knowing the potential impact of future environmental change, stakeholders could develop adapting strategies to prevent regional water resources risks (Leng et al., 2015; Gosling et al., 2016; Popp et al., 2017). For instance, in the URHR, our study showed that the FMS will decrease in 2020 and 2030 under climate scenarios of A2 and B2. With this knowledge, we can suggest that there would be less flood risk in the URHR, and the stakeholder may invest moderate funding to defense risk. Besides, by integrating historical change and scenario analysis into ES assessment, we provide a useful framework to understand the whole dynamic variations of ES. After controlling for some variables and contrast changes of variables, the dominant factor and possible magnitude of the effect of dominant factor on ESs can be identified (Popp et al., 2017).
There are also some uncertainties in the process of FMS evaluation, though we carefully deal with the models. First, future climate changes scenarios provide a possible but not completely accurately description of future climate change (Leng et al., 2015). In this study, the impacts of historical and future climate change on the ecosystem services is the main content of research, thus there is only one climate model (HadCM3) involved in. In further study about the construction of exhaustive ecosystem services assessment, more diverse climate change models and scenarios should be taken into consideration. It could be helpful for the stakeholders to find out more suitable measures and put forward a more targeted policy in protection of natural ecosystem. In addition, the key parameter CN in the SCS-CN model is sensitive to the local land use change, micro-topography and local climate change, and may affect the runoff calculation to some extent (Fu et al., 2013). On the small-scale regional studies, the local land use micro-change should be taken into account. Furthermore, the land use change scenario should be considered in the future studies, especially in regions where land use changes rapidly. As discussed above, the land use change has a remarkable hydrological effect on ecosystem (Carvalho-Santos et al., 2016; Zuo et al., 2016), and Fu et al. (2015) also emphasized that more attention should be paid to the link between ES and land use. In our study, the land use of URHR showed little change during 2000-2014, so we did not model the land use scenario. However, in a constantly and dramatically land use changing region, the role of land use change in the FMS should not be neglected.

5 Conclusions

Assessing and mapping of flood mitigation service (FMS) are critical for regional water resources and flood risk management. Based on the SCS-CN model and climate scenario analysis, we analyzed the historical spatio-temporal variations and future variations of FMS in the URHR, China. The main conclusions are as follows:
FMS showed a fluctuating rising trend during the period of 2000-2014, and FMS reversed abruptly in 2011, thus dividing the period into two phases with apparently different trends: FMS increased from 2000 to 2010, while decreased from 2011 to 2014. Spatially, the FMS in southern URHR was higher than that of northern URHR, and the change rate of FMS in the upstream of URHR was higher than downstream of URHR. The future FMS under scenarios of A2 and B2 in 2020 and 2030 will decrease in comparison with the historical annual mean FMS (2000-2014). For each sub-basin, compared with 2020, the FMS in 2030 will decrease further. Besides, the difference between A2 and B2 scenarios is quite small. The slight land use changes in the URHR have feeble impacts on the FMS, while the runoff and storm change have a significant influence on the FMS. We concluded that the climate change played a key role in the flood mitigation in the URHR.
Our study suggests that both historical and scenario analysis are vital for better understanding the ecological process, and practically provides scientific reference for government and stakeholders to make targeted and purposeful measures in watershed water resources management.

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

References

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Barbedo J, Miguez M, van der H Det al., 2014. Enhancing ecosystem services for flood mitigation: A conservation strategy for peri-urban landscapes?Ecology and Society, 19(2): 54.

[4]
Barth N C, Döll P, 2016. Assessing the ecosystem service flood protection of a riparian forest by applying a cascade approach. Ecosystem Services, 21, Part A: 39-52.61Assessment of the ecosystem service flood protection of a riparian wetland.61Workflow for a comprehensive and consistent implementation of the cascade approach.61Use of EU flood hazard and risk maps, no site-specific hydrological modeling.61Replacement costs 68 million EUR (1900 EUR/ha/yr) for an extreme flood.61Avoided damage costs at least 4300 EUR/ha/yr for a 10-year flood.

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[5]
Brauman K A, Daily G C, Duarte T Ket al., 2007. The nature and value of ecosystem services: An overview highlighting hydrologic services.Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 32: 67-98.Ecosystem services, the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, are a powerful lens through which to understand human relationships with the environment and to design environmental policy. The explicit inclusion of beneficiaries makes values intrinsic to ecosystem services; whether or not those values are monetized, the ecosystem services framework provides a way to assess trade-offs among alternative scenarios of resource use and land-and seascape change. We provide an overview of the ecosystem functions responsible for producing terrestrial hydrologic services and use this context to lay out a blueprint for a more general ecosystem service assessment. Other ecosystem services are addressed in our discussion of scale and trade-offs. We review valuation and policy tools useful for ecosystem service protectiou and provide several examples of land management using these tools. Throughout, we highlight avenues for research to advance the ecosystem services framework as an operational basis for policy decisions.

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[6]
Burkhard B, Kroll F, Nedkov Set al., 2012. Mapping ecosystem service supply, demand and budgets.Ecological Indicators, 21: 17-29.Among the main effects of human activities on the environment are land use and resulting land cover changes. Such changes impact the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services to the human society. This supply of multiple goods and services by nature should match the demands of the society, if self-sustaining human nvironmental systems and a sustainable utilization of natural capital are to be achieved. To describe respective states and dynamics, appropriate indicators and data for their quantification, including quantitative and qualitative assessments, are needed. By linking land cover information from, e.g. remote sensing, land survey and GIS with data from monitoring, statistics, modeling or interviews, ecosystem service supply and demand can be assessed and transferred to different spatial and temporal scales. The results reveal patterns of human activities over time and space as well as the capacities of different ecosystems to provide ecosystem services under changing land use. Also the locations of respective demands for these services can be determined. As maps are powerful tools, they hold high potentials for visualization of complex phenomena. We present an easy-to-apply concept based on a matrix linking spatially explicit biophysical landscape units to ecological integrity, ecosystem service supply and demand. An exemplary application for energy supply and demand in a central German case study region and respective maps for the years 1990 and 2007 are presented. Based on these data, the concept for an appropriate quantification and related spatial visualization of ecosystem service supply and demand is elaborated and discussed.

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[7]
Carvalho-Santos C, Nunes J P, Monteiro A Tet al., 2016. Assessing the effects of land cover and future climate conditions on the provision of hydrological services in a medium-sized watershed of Portugal.Hydrological Processes, 30(5): 720-738.The separated and combined effects of land-cover scenarios and future climate on the provision of hydrological services were evaluated in Vez watershed, northern Portugal. Soil and Water Assessment Tool was calibrated against daily discharge, sediments and nitrates, with good agreements between model predictions and field observations. Four hypothetical land-cover scenarios were applied under current climate conditions (eucalyptus/pine, oak, agriculture/vine and low vegetation). A statistical downscaling of four General Circulation Models, bias-corrected with ground observations, was carried out for 2021–2040 and 2041–2060, using representative concentration pathway 4.5 scenario. Also, the combined effects of future climate conditions were evaluated under eucalyptus/pine and agriculture/vine scenario. Results for land cover revealed that eucalyptus/pine scenario reduced by 7% the annual water quantity and up to 17% in the summer period. Although climate change has only a modest effect on the reduction of the total annual discharge (617%), the effect on the water levels during summer was more pronounced, between 6115% and 6138%. This study shows that climate change can affect the provision of hydrological services by reducing dry season flows and by increasing flood risks during the wet months. Regarding the combined effects, future climate may reduce the low flows, which can be aggravated with eucalyptus/pine scenario. In turn, peak flows and soil erosion can be offset. Future climate may increase soil erosion and nitrate concentration, which can be aggravated with agriculture scenario. Results moreover emphasize the need to consider both climate and land-cover impacts in adaptation and land management options at the watershed scale. Copyright 08 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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[8]
Castello L, Macedo M N, 2016. Large-scale degradation of Amazonian freshwater ecosystems.Global Change Biology, 22(3): 990-1007.Abstract Hydrological connectivity regulates the structure and function of Amazonian freshwater ecosystems and the provisioning of services that sustain local populations. This connectivity is increasingly being disrupted by the construction of dams, mining, land-cover changes, and global climate change. This review analyzes these drivers of degradation, evaluates their impacts on hydrological connectivity, and identifies policy deficiencies that hinder freshwater ecosystem protection. There are 154 large hydroelectric dams in operation today, and 21 dams under construction. The current trajectory of dam construction will leave only three free-flowing tributaries in the next few decades if all 277 planned dams are completed. Land-cover changes driven by mining, dam and road construction, agriculture and cattle ranching have already affected ~20% of the Basin and up to ~50% of riparian forests in some regions. Global climate change will likely exacerbate these impacts by creating warmer and dryer conditions, with less predictable rainfall and more extreme events (e.g., droughts and floods). The resulting hydrological alterations are rapidly degrading freshwater ecosystems, both independently and via complex feedbacks and synergistic interactions. The ecosystem impacts include biodiversity loss, warmer stream temperatures, stronger and more frequent floodplain fires, and changes to biogeochemical cycles, transport of organic and inorganic materials, and freshwater community structure and function. The impacts also include reductions in water quality, fish yields, and availability of water for navigation, power generation, and human use. This degradation of Amazonian freshwater ecosystems cannot be curbed presently because existing policies are inconsistent across the Basin, ignore cumulative effects, and overlook the hydrological connectivity of freshwater ecosystems. Maintaining the integrity of these freshwater ecosystems requires a basinwide research and policy framework to understand and manage hydrological connectivity across multiple spatial scales and jurisdictional boundaries.

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[9]
Chen H, Guo S, Xu C Yet al., 2007. Historical temporal trends of hydro-climatic variables and runoff response to climate variability and their relevance in water resource management in the Hanjiang Basin.Journal of Hydrology, 344(3/4): 171-184.The Danjiangkou reservoir lies in the upper Hanjiang basin and is the source of water for the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project (SNWDP) in China. Any significant change in the magnitude or timing of runoff from the Danjiangkou reservoir induced by changes in climatic variables would have significant implications for the economic prosperity of the area in the Hanjiang basin as well as for the South-to-North Water Diversion Project. In this paper the following issues are investigated: (1) Temporal trends of annual and seasonal precipitation and temperature from 1951 to 2003 in the Hanjiang basin are analyzed using the Mann–Kendall and the linear regression methods; spatial distributions of precipitation and temperature are interpolated by the inverse distance weighted interpolation method. (2) Temporal trends of runoff, precipitation and temperature from 1951 to 2003 in the Danjiangkou reservoir, an upper stream basin of the Hanjiang River, are further tested. (3) To assess the impact of climate change on water resources and predict the future runoff change in the Danjiangkou reservoir basin, a two-parameter water balance model is used to simulate the hydrological response for the climate change predicted by GCMs for the region for the period of 2021–2050. The results indicate that (1) at the α = 0.05 significance level precipitation in the Hanjiang basin has no trend, but the temperature in the same region has significant upward trends in most parts of the Hanjiang basin. (2) The mean annual, spring, and winter runoffs in the Danjiangkou reservoir basin have decreasing trends. (3) The results simulated for the period 2021–2050 show that runoff of the Danjiangkou reservoir would increase in all the seasons, mainly in response to the predicted precipitation increase in the region. Sensitivity analysis shows that a 1 °C and 2 °C increase in temperature would reduce the mean annual runoff to about 3.5% and 7%, respectively. A decrease/increase of the mean monthly precipitation of 20% and 10% would decrease/increase the mean annual runoff to about 30% and 15%, respectively. The results of this study provide a scientific reference not only for assessing the impact of the climate change on water resources and the flood prevention in the Hanjiang basin, but also for dimensioning the middle route of the SNWDP in China.

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[10]
Chen H, Liang Z, Liu Yet al., 2017. Integrated remote sensing imagery and two-dimensional hydraulic modeling approach for impact evaluation of flood on crop yields.Journal of Hydrology, 553(Suppl. C): 262-275.The projected frequent occurrences of extreme flood events will cause significant losses to crops and will threaten food security. To reduce the potential risk and provide support for agricultural flood management, prevention, and mitigation, it is important to account for flood damage to crop production and to understand the relationship between flood characteristics and crop losses. A quantitative and effective evaluation tool is therefore essential to explore what and how flood characteristics will affect the associated crop loss, based on accurately understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of flood evolution and crop growth. Current evaluation methods are generally integrally or qualitatively based on statistic data or ex-post survey with less diagnosis into the process and dynamics of historical flood events. Therefore, a quantitative and spatial evaluation framework is presented in this study that integrates remote sensing imagery and hydraulic model simulation to facilitate the identification of historical flood characteristics that influence crop losses. Remote sensing imagery can capture the spatial variation of crop yields and yield losses from floods on a grid scale over large areas; however, it is incapable of providing spatial information regarding flood progression. Two-dimensional hydraulic model can simulate the dynamics of surface runoff and accomplish spatial and temporal quantification of flood characteristics on a grid scale over watersheds, i.e., flow velocity and flood duration. The methodological framework developed herein includes the following: (a) Vegetation indices for the critical period of crop growth from mid-high temporal and spatial remote sensing imagery in association with agricultural statistics data were used to develop empirical models to monitor the crop yield and evaluate yield losses from flood; (b) The two-dimensional hydraulic model coupled with the SCS-CN hydrologic model was employed to simulate the flood evolution process, with the SCS-CN model as a rainfall-runoff generator and the two-dimensional hydraulic model implementing the routing scheme for surface runoff; and (c) The spatial combination between crop yield losses and flood dynamics on a grid scale can be used to investigate the relationship between the intensity of flood characteristics and associated loss extent. The modeling framework was applied for a 50-year return period flood that occurred in Jilin province, Northeast China, which caused large agricultural losses in August, 2013. The modeling results indicated that (a) the flow velocity was the most influential factor that caused spring corn, rice and soybean yield losses from extreme storm event in the mountainous regions; (b) the power function archived the best results that fit the velocity-loss relationship for mountainous areas; and (c) integrated remote sensing imagery and two-dimensional hydraulic modeling approach are helpful for evaluating the influence of historical flood event on crop production and investigating the relationship between flood characteristics and crop yield losses.

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[11]
Feng X M, Fu B J, Piao Set al., 2016. Revegetation in China’s Loess Plateau is approaching sustainable water resource limits.Nature Climate Change, 6(11): 1019-1022.Revegetation of degraded ecosystems provides opportunities for carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. However, vegetation expansion in water-limited areas creates potentially conflicting demands for water between the ecosystem and humans. Current understanding of these competing demands is still limited. Here, we study the semi-arid Loess Plateau in China, where the `Grain to Green large-scale revegetation programme has been in operation since 1999. As expected, we found that the new planting has caused both net primary productivity (NPP) and evapotranspiration (ET) to increase. Also the increase of ET has induced a significant (p < 0.001) decrease in the ratio of river runoff to annual precipitation across hydrological catchments. From currently revegetated areas and human water demand, we estimate a threshold of NPP of 400 +/- 5 g C myrabove which the population will suffer water shortages. NPP in this region is found to be already close to this limit. The threshold of NPP could change by -36% in the worst case of climate drying and high human withdrawals, to +43% in the best case. Our results develop a new conceptual framework to determine the critical carbon sequestration that is sustainable in terms of both ecological and socio-economic resource demands in a coupled anthropogenic-biological system.

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[12]
Fu B, Wang Y K, Xu Pet al., 2013. Mapping the flood mitigation services of ecosystems: A case study in the Upper Yangtze River Basin.Ecological Engineering, 52: 238-246.Effective flood management measures incorporate the flood mitigation functions of natural ecosystems, but the exact functions and effects of forests, grasslands and other ecosystems in mitigating floods are not clearly understood. In this paper, a flood mitigation assessment model was established based on the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) method, and the function and potential capacity of ecosystems for mitigating flooding in the Upper Yangtze River Basin (UYRB) were assessed. The monetary value of flood mitigation service was calculated by formulating an exponential function with respect to the amount of storm and flood damage. The results showed that ecosystems in the UYRB reduced flooding by a total of 42.8 billion cubic meters. Statistical equations developed for the amount of storm and flood damage gave an average of 6.479 billion RMB Yuan as the value of ecosystem flood mitigation in the UYRB. Despite their small cost, ecosystems have the potential to reduce flood damage by more than half, an indication of the important role of ecological systems in flood management. This approach can be used to identify high-value areas for ecological protection, and also to provide the governments at various levels with important information for decision-making related to integrated flood management.

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[13]
Fu B J, Zhang L W, Xu Z Het al., 2015. Ecosystem services in changing land use.Journal of Soils and Sediments, 15(4): 833-843.

[14]
Gosling S N, Arnell N W, 2016. A global assessment of the impact of climate change on water scarcity. Climatic Change, 134(3): 371-385.This paper presents a global scale assessment of the impact of climate change on water scarcity. Patterns of climate change from 21 Global Climate Models (GCMs) under four SRES scenarios are applied to a global hydrological model to estimate water resources across 1339 watersheds. The Water Crowding Index (WCI) and the Water Stress Index (WSI) are used to calculate exposure to increases and decreases in global water scarcity due to climate change. 1.6 (WCI) and 2.4 (WSI) billion people are estimated to be currently living within watersheds exposed to water scarcity. Using the WCI, by 2050 under the A1B scenario, 0.5 to 3.1 billion people are exposed to an increase in water scarcity due to climate change (range across 21 GCMs). This represents a higher upper-estimate than previous assessments because scenarios are constructed from a wider range of GCMs. A substantial proportion of the uncertainty in the global-scale effect of climate change on water scarcity is due to uncertainty in the estimates for South Asia and East Asia. Sensitivity to the WCI and WSI thresholds that define water scarcity can be comparable to the sensitivity to climate change pattern. More of the world will see an increase in exposure to water scarcity than a decrease due to climate change but this is not consistent across all climate change patterns. Additionally, investigation of the effects of a set of prescribed global mean temperature change scenarios show rapid increases in water scarcity due to climate change across many regions of the globe, up to 2C, followed by stabilisation to 4C.

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[15]
Guo J, Chen H, Xu C Yet al., 2012. Prediction of variability of precipitation in the Yangtze River Basin under the climate change conditions based on automated statistical downscaling.Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 26(2): 157-176.AbstractMany impact studies require climate change information at a finer resolution than that provided by general circulation models (GCMs). Therefore the outputs from GCMs have to be downscaled to obtain the finer resolution climate change scenarios. In this study, an automated statistical downscaling (ASD) regression-based approach is proposed for predicting the daily precipitation of 138 main meteorological stations in the Yangtze River basin for 2010–2099 by statistical downscaling of the outputs of general circulation model (HadCM3) under A2 and B2 scenarios. After that, the spatial–temporal changes of the amount and the extremes of predicted precipitation in the Yangtze River basin are investigated by Mann–Kendall trend test and spatial interpolation. The results showed that: (1) the amount and the change pattern of precipitation could be reasonably simulated by ASD; (2) the predicted annual precipitation will decrease in all sub-catchments during 2020s, while increase in all sub-catchments of the Yangtze River Basin during 2050s and during 2080s, respectively, under A2 scenario. However, they have mix-trend in each sub-catchment of Yangtze River basin during 2020s, but increase in all sub-catchments during 2050s and 2080s, except for Hanjiang River region during 2080s, as far as B2 scenario is concerned; and (3) the significant increasing trend of the precipitation intensity and maximum precipitation are mainly occurred in the northwest upper part and the middle part of the Yangtze River basin for the whole year and summer under both climate change scenarios and the middle of 2040–2060 can be regarded as the starting point for pattern change of precipitation maxima.

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[16]
Hessami M, Gachon P, Ouarda T B M Jet al., 2008. Automated regression-based statistical downscaling tool.Environmental Modelling & Software, 23(6): 813-834.Many impact studies require climate change information at a finer resolution than that provided by Global Climate Models (GCMs). In the last 10 years, downscaling techniques, both dynamical (i.e. Regional Climate Model) and statistical methods, have been developed to obtain fine resolution climate change scenarios. In this study, an automated statistical downscaling (ASD) regression-based approach inspired by the SDSM method (statistical downscaling model) developed by Wilby, R.L., Dawson, C.W., Barrow, E.M. [2002. SDSM – a decision support tool for the assessment of regional climate change impacts, Environmental Modelling and Software 17, 147–159] is presented and assessed to reconstruct the observed climate in eastern Canada based extremes as well as mean state. In the ASD model, automatic predictor selection methods are based on backward stepwise regression and partial correlation coefficients. The ASD model also gives the possibility to use ridge regression to alleviate the effect of the non-orthogonality of predictor vectors. Outputs from the first generation Canadian Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM1) and the third version of the coupled global Hadley Centre Climate Model (HadCM3) are used to test this approach over the current period (i.e. 1961–1990), and compare results with observed temperature and precipitation from 10 meteorological stations of Environment Canada located in eastern Canada. All ASD and SDSM models, as these two models are evaluated and inter-compared, are calibrated using NCEP (National Center for Environmental Prediction) reanalysis data before the use of GCMs atmospheric fields as input variables. The results underline certain limitations to downscale the precipitation regime and its strength to downscale the temperature regime. When modeling precipitation, the most commonly combination of predictor variables were relative and specific humidity at 500 hPa, surface airflow strength, 850 hPa zonal velocity and 500 hPa geopotential height. For modeling temperature, mean sea level pressure, surface vorticity and 850 hPa geopotential height were the most dominant variables. To evaluate the performance of the statistical downscaling approach, several climatic and statistical indices were developed. Results indicate that the agreement of simulations with observations depends on the GCMs atmospheric variables used as “predictors” in the regression-based approach, and the performance of the statistical downscaling model varies for different stations and seasons. The comparison of SDSM and ASD models indicated that neither could perform well for all seasons and months. However, using different statistical downscaling models and multi-sources GCMs data can provide a better range of uncertainty for climatic and statistical indices.

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[17]
Hooshyar M, Wang D, 2016. An analytical solution of Richards’ equation providing the physical basis of SCS curve number method and its proportionality relationship.Water Resources Research, 52(8): 6611-6620.The empirical proportionality relationship, which indicates that the ratio of cumulative surface runoff and infiltration to their corresponding potentials are equal, is the basis of the extensively used Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) method. The objective of this paper is to provide the physical basis of the SCS-CN method and its proportionality hypothesis from the infiltration excess runoff generation perspective. To achieve this purpose, an analytical solution of Richards' equation is derived for ponded infiltration in shallow water table environment under the following boundary conditions: (1) the soil is saturated at the land surface; and (2) there is a no-flux boundary which moves downward. The solution is established based on the assumptions of negligible gravitational effect, constant soil water diffusivity, and hydrostatic soil moisture profile between the no-flux boundary and water table. Based on the derived analytical solution, the proportionality hypothesis is a reasonable approximation for rainfall partitioning at the early stage of ponded infiltration in areas with a shallow water table for coarse textured soils.

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[18]
Jiang M, Lu X G, Xu L Set al., 2007. Flood mitigation benefit of wetland soil: A case study in Momoge National Nature Reserve in China.Ecological Economics, 61(2/3): 217-223.Wetlands have many important functions. To a wide range of wildlife species, they offer critically important habitats. They also act to mitigate flooding, regulate micro and macro climate changes, degrade pollutants and control erosion etc. Wetland benefits are these functions, which provide direct, indirect, and non-use values to humans. In this study, field soil data are used to calculate the flood mitigation benefits of wetland soils within the Momoge National Nature Reserve, Jilin Province, the People's Republic of China. Calculations are based upon environmental economic assessment methods and GIS techniques. The estimated flood mitigation capacity of wetland soils within the Momoge Reserve was 7.15 10 4m 3/hm 2/yr. This translated into an economic benefit of 5700 $/hm 2/yr due to flood mitigation. Spatial differences in the flood mitigation ability of soils were observed across the Momoge wetlands. Benefits associated with flood mitigation were highest within the middle reaches of the Momoge wetlands and least in the East. This quantitative analysis of flood mitigation benefit, with its investigation of wetland soils, will be a useful reference both for the assessment of wetland values in the local region and also for the greater understanding wetland function and value assessment methods.

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[19]
Johns T C, Gregory J M, Ingram W Jet al., 2003. Anthropogenic climate change for 1860 to 2100 simulated with the HadCM3 model under updated emissions scenarios.Climate Dynamics, 20(6): 583-612.In this study we examine the anthropogenically forced climate response over the historical period, 1860 to present, and projected response to 2100, using updated emissions scenarios and an improved co

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[20]
Keesstra S, Nunes J, Novara Aet al., 2018. The superior effect of nature based solutions in land management for enhancing ecosystem services.Science of The Total Environment, 610(Suppl. C): 997-1009.The rehabilitation and restoration of land is a key strategy to recover services -goods and resources- ecosystems offer to the humankind. This paper reviews key examples to understand the superior effect of nature based solutions to enhance the sustainabilit y of catchment systems by promoting desirable soil and landscape functions. The use of concepts such as connectivity and the theory of system thinking framework allowed to review coastal and river management as a guide to evaluate other strategies to achieve sustainability. In land management NBSs are not mainstream management. Through a set of case studies: organic farming in Spain; rewilding in Slovenia; land restoration in Iceland, sediment trapping in Ethiopia and wetland construction in Sweden, we show the potential of Nature based solutions (NBSs) as a cost-effective long term solution for hydrological risks and land degradation. NBSs can be divided into two main groups of strategies: soil solutions and landscape solutions. Soil solutions aim to enhance the soil health and soil functions through which local eco-system services will be maintained or restored. Landscape solutions mainly focus on the concept of connectivity. Making the landscape less connected, facilitating less rainfall to be transformed into runoff and therefore reducing flood risk, increasing soil moisture and reducing droughts and soil erosion we can achieve the sustainability. The enhanced eco-system services directly feed into the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

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[21]
Kim B, Kim H, Kim H, 2016. A framework for pricing the loss of regulating ecosystem services caused by road construction.KSCE Journal of Civil Engineering, 20(7): 2624-2631.Road construction is a primary cause of the loss of ecosystems and their services. However, such loss of ecosystem services has not been reflected in key decision-making processes, such as in cost-benefit analysis due to difficulty in pricing the cost. This study proposes a framework for pricing the loss of regulating ecosystem services caused by road construction. Two important characteristics of the proposed framework are the adoption of the replacement cost method and the use of limited information in the planning phase of road projects. A case study was conducted to validate the proposed framework, with an emphasis on carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and water storage services, based on 49 typical road construction projects in the Republic of Korea. On average, the costs of the loss of carbon sequestration, flood mitigation, and water storage services were estimated to be 5,055, 6,412, and 8,004 in units of $/lane-km, respectively, and the total costs were estimated to be an average of 19,474 $/lane-km, accounting for 0.47% of the direct construction cost. These findings are the effort for pricing the loss of ecosystem services caused by road construction from an engineering perspective. The proposed framework can be used to provide clear guidance for sustainable development.

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[22]
Lal M, Mishra S K, Pandey Aet al., 2017. Evaluation of the Soil Conservation Service curve number methodology using data from agricultural plots.Hydrogeology Journal, 25(1): 151-167.The Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) method, also known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service curve number (NRCS-CN) method, is popular for computing the volume of direct surfac

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[23]
Leng G, Tang Q, Rayburg S, 2015. Climate change impacts on meteorological, agricultural and hydrological droughts in China.Global and Planetary Change, 126(Suppl. C): 23-34.61More severe, prolonged, and frequent droughts are projected in the future in China.61Climate warming would induce more extreme droughts than mean droughts.61Changes in meteorological, agricultural and hydrological droughts are different.61Agricultural drought tends to increase with climate warming from 0.5 to 3K.611K warming causes the largest impact on meteorological and hydrological droughts.

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[24]
Li J, Liu C, Wang Zet al., 2015. Two universal runoff yield models: SCS vs. LCM.Journal of Geographical Sciences, 25(3): 311-318.Runoff calculation is one of the key components in the hydrological modeling. For a certain spatial scale, runoff is a very complex nonlinear process. Currently, the runoff yield model in different hydrological models is not unique. The Chinese LCM model and the American SCS model describe runoff at the macroscopic scale, taking into account the relationship between total actual retention and total rainfall and having a certain similarity. In this study, by comparing the two runoff yield models using theoretical analyses and numerical simulations, we have found that: (1) the SCS model is a simple linear representation of the LCM model, and the LCM model reflects more significantly the nonlinearity of catchment runoff. (2) There are strict mathematical relationships between parameters (R, r) of the LCM model and between parameters (S) of the SCS model, respectively. Parameters (R, r) of the LCM can be determined using the research results of the SCS model parameters. (3) LCM model parameters (R, r) can be easily obtained by field experiments, while SCS parameters (S) are difficult to measure. Therefore, parameters (R, r) of the LCM model also can provide the foundation for the SCS model. (4) The SCS model has a linear relationship between the reciprocal of total actual retention and the reciprocal of total rainfall during runoff period. The one-order terms of a Taylor series expansion of the LCM model describe the same relationship, which is worth further study.

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[25]
Li Y, Xiong W, Zhang Wet al., 2016. Life cycle assessment of water supply alternatives in water-receiving areas of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China.Water Research, 89: 9-19.61Water supply alternatives were compared through LCA in Northern China.61Wastewater reclamation is the most sustainable option for Jinan and Qingdao.61Middle route of SNWDP is the most sustainable option for its water-receiving areas.61Environmental impacts of east route are higher than middle route of the SNWDP.61Seawater desalination provokes greatest environmental impacts in all study areas.

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[26]
Li Y, Zhang L, Qiu Jet al., 2017. Spatially explicit quantification of the interactions among ecosystem services.Landscape Ecology, 32(6): 1181-1199.Human demands for ecosystem services (ES) have tremendously changed the landscape and led to degradation of ecosystems and associated services. The resolving of current eco-environmental problems call

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[27]
Li Y, Zhang L, Yan Jet al., 2017. Mapping the hotspots and coldspots of ecosystem services in conservation priority setting.Journal of Geographical Sciences, 27(6): 681-696.Spatial-explicitly mapping of the hotspots and coldspots is a vital link in the priority setting for ecosystem services (ES) conservation. However, little research has identified and tested the compactness and efficiency of their ES hotspots and coldspots, which may weaken the effectiveness of ecological conservation. In this study, based on the RUSLE model and Getis-Ord Gi* statistics, we quantified the variation of annual soil conservation services (SC) and identified the statistically significant hotspots and coldspots in Shaanxi Province of China from 2000 to 2013. The results indicate that, 1) areas with high SC presented a significantly increasing trend as well, while areas with low SC only changed slightly; 2) SC hotspots and coldspots showed an obvious spatial differentiation he hotspots were mainly spatially aggregated in southern Shaanxi, while the coldspots were mainly distributed in the Guanzhong Basin and Sand-windy Plateau; and 3) the identified hotspots had the highest capacity of providing SC, with 29.6% of the total area providing 59.7% of the total service. In contrast, the coldspots occupied 46.3% of the total area, but only provided 17.2% of the total SC. In addition to conserving single ES, the Getis-Ord Gi* statistics method can also help identify multi-functional priority areas for conserving multiple ES and biodiversity.

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[28]
Liang S, Hurteau M D, Westerling A L, 2017. Response of Sierra Nevada forests to projected climate-wildfire interactions.Global Change Biology, 23(5): 2016-2030.Climate influences forests directly and indirectly through disturbance. The interaction of climate change and increasing area burned has the potential to alter forest composition and community assembly. However, the overall forest response is likely to be influenced by species-specific responses to environmental change and the scale of change in overstory species cover. In this study, we sought to quantify how projected changes in climate and large wildfire size would alter forest communities and carbon (C) dynamics, irrespective of competition from nontree species and potential changes in other fire regimes, across the Sierra Nevada, USA. We used a species-specific, spatially explicit forest landscape model (LANDIS-II) to evaluate forest response to climate-wildfire interactions under historical (baseline) climate and climate projections from three climate models (GFDL, CCSM3, and CNRM) forced by a medium-high emission scenario (A2) in combination with corresponding climate-specific large wildfire projections. By late century, we found modest changes in the spatial distribution of dominant species by biomass relative to baseline, but extensive changes in recruitment distribution. Although forest recruitment declined across much of the Sierra, we found that projected climate and wildfire favored the recruitment of more drought-tolerant species over less drought-tolerant species relative to baseline, and this change was greatest at mid-elevations. We also found that projected climate and wildfire decreased tree species richness across a large proportion of the study area and transitioned more area to a C source, which reduced landscape-level C sequestration potential. Our study, although a conservative estimate, suggests that by late century, forest community distributions may not change as intact units as predicted by biome-based modeling, but are likely to trend toward simplified community composition as communities gradually disaggregate and the least tolerant species are no longer able to establish. The potential exists for substantial community composition change and forest simplification beyond this century.

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[29]
Lin W, Yang F, Zhou Let al., 2017. Using modified Soil Conservation Service curve number method to simulate the role of forest in flood control in the upper reach of the Tingjiang River in China.Journal of Mountain Science, 14(1): 1-14.

[30]
Liu C, Li Y, 2017. GIS-based dynamic modelling and analysis of flash floods considering land-use planning.International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 31(3): 481-498.Flood inundation is a common natural disaster and a growing development challenge for many cities and thousands of small towns around the world. Soil features have frequently altered with the rapid development of urbanised regions, which has led to more frequent and longer duration of flooding in urban flood-prone regions. Thus, this paper presents a geographic information system (GIS)-based methodology for measuring and visualising the effects on urban flash floods generated by land-use changes over time. The measurement is formulated with a time series in order to perform a dynamic analysis. A catchment mesh is introduced into a hydrological model for reflecting the spatial layouts of infrastructure and structures over different construction periods. The Geelong Waurn Ponds campus of Deakin University is then selected as a case study. Based on GIS simulation and mapping technologies, this research illustrates the evolutionary process of flash floods. The paper then describes flood inundation for different built environments and presents a comparison by quantifying the flooding extents for infrastructure and structures. The results reveal that the GIS-based estimation model can examine urban flash floods in different development phases and identify the change of flooding extents in terms of land-use planning. This study will bring benefits to urban planners in raising awareness of flood impact and the approach proposed here could be used for flood mitigation through future urban planning.

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[31]
Liu J, Wang X, Zhang Bet al., 2017. Storm flood risk zoning in the typical regions of Asia using GIS technology.Natural Hazards, 87(3): 1691-1707.Abstract According to the basic principles of flood risk, risk of storm hazard, stability of disaster environment and vulnerabilities of hazard-affected bodies, we used South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia as the study area and comprehensively considered major indicators, including the rainfall, topography, land use, vegetation, river network density, population and economic strength, to perform a disaster impact evaluation. The above-mentioned factors were normalized to obtain standardized multi-source raster data using the geographic information system (GIS) software package. The weights of relevant indicators were determined according to analytic hierarchy processes, and a model to perform comprehensive risk assessment of flood was constructed. We used GIS to obtain an assessment map of the flood comprehensive risk levels of typical Asian areas. With the help of the comprehensive analysis, genesis and mitigation service principles and assessment map of the flood comprehensive risk levels, both qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on the study region. Finally, the study area was divided into six sub-regions, the northwestern, southwestern, southern, and central districts, eastern plains, and southeastern coastal areas. Among these districts, the eastern plains and southeastern coastal areas had the highest risk, followed by the southern district. Meanwhile, the southwestern district had lower values, and the northwestern and central districts exhibited the lowest risk. The results from this research have significant reference values regarding macro-policy decisions on the prevention of flood disasters in the South Asia, East Asia and Southeast Asia.

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[32]
Liu X, Zhu X, Pan Yet al., 2016. Vegetation dynamics in Qinling-Daba Mountains in relation to climate factors between 2000 and 2014.Journal of Geographical Sciences, 26(1): 45-58.Using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) dataset, we investigated the patterns of spatiotemporal variation in vegetation coverage and its associated driving forces in the Qinling-Daba (Qinba) Mountains in 2000–2014. The Sen and Mann–Kendall models and partial correlation analysis were used to analyze the data, followed by calculation of the Hurst index to analyze future trends in vegetation coverage. The results of the study showed that (1) NDVI of the study area exhibited a significant increase in 2000–2014 (linear tendency, 2.8%/10a). During this period, a stable increase was detected before 2010 (linear tendency, 4.32%/10a), followed by a sharp decline after 2010 (linear tendency,–6.59%/10a). (2) Spatially, vegetation cover showed a “high in the middle and a low in the surroundings” pattern. High values of vegetation coverage were mainly found in the Qinba Mountains of Shaanxi Province. (3) The area with improved vegetation coverage was larger than the degraded area, being 81.32% and 18.68%, respectively, during the study period. Piecewise analysis revealed that 71.61% of the total study area showed a decreasing trend in vegetation coverage in 2010–2014. (4) Reverse characteristics of vegetation coverage change were stronger than the same characteristics on the Qinba Mountains. About 46.89% of the entire study area is predicted to decrease in the future, while 34.44% of the total area will follow a continuously increasing trend. (5) The change of vegetation coverage was mainly attributed to the deficit in precipitation. Moreover, vegetation coverage during La Nina years was higher than that during El Nino years. (6) Human activities can induce ambiguous effects on vegetation coverage: both positive effects (through implementation of ecological restoration projects) and negative effects (through urbanization) were observed.

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[33]
Lu Y, Qin X S, Xie Y J, 2016. An integrated statistical and data-driven framework for supporting flood risk analysis under climate change.Journal of Hydrology, 533: 28-39.An integrated statistical and data-driven (ISD) framework was proposed for analyzing river flows and flood frequencies in the Duhe River Basin, China, under climate change. The proposed framework involved four major components: (i) a hybrid model based on ASD (Automated regression-based Statistical Downscaling tool) and KNN (K-nearest neighbor) was used for downscaling rainfall and CDEN (Conditional Density Estimate Network) was applied for downscaling minimum temperature and relative humidity from global circulation models (GCMs) to local weather stations; (ii) Bayesian neural network (BNN) was used for simulating monthly river flows based on projected weather information; (iii) KNN was applied for converting monthly flow to daily time series; (iv) Generalized Extreme Value (GEV) distribution was adopted for flood frequency analysis. In this study, the variables from CGCM3 A2 and HadCM3 A2 scenarios were employed as the large-scale predictors. The results indicated that the maximum monthly and annual runoffs would both increase under CGCM3 and HadCM3 A2 emission scenarios at the middle and end of this century. The flood risk in the study area would generally increase with a widening uncertainty range. Compared with traditional approaches, the proposed framework takes the full advantages of a series of statistical and data-driven methods and offers a parsimonious way of projecting flood risks under climatic change conditions.

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[34]
Marsooli R, Orton P M, Georgas Net al., 2016. Three-dimensional hydrodynamic modeling of coastal flood mitigation by wetlands.Coastal Engineering, 111: 83-94.61The Stevens Institute of Technology Estuarine and Coastal Ocean Model (sECOM) is enhanced to investigate the mitigation of coastal flood by wetlands.61The model adopts two well-established empirical formulas to determine the vegetation drag coefficient.61The importance of vegetation-induced terms in the Navier–Stokes equations as well as the transport equations of turbulence quantities is investigated.61The enhanced model is successfully validated against laboratory experiments of flows over submerged and emergent vegetation.61The enhanced model is applied to simulate the impacts of intertidal salt marshes of Jamaica Bay, NY, on the storm tide produced by Hurricane Irene.61The model results indicate that the salt marshes played only a minimal role in mitigating the peak water elevations induced by Irene.61The presence of the marshes caused higher velocities in non-vegetated areas such as deep channels, and lower velocities in vegetated areas.61The salt marshes may greatly redistribute the storm tide energy around the bay, with likely feedbacks on water quality, marsh stability, and the response to sea level rise.

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[35]
Mishra S K, Pandey A, Singh V P, 2012. Special Issue on Soil Conservation Service Curve Number (SCS-CN) Methodology Introduction. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, 17(11): 1157-1157.

[36]
Moss R H, Edmonds J A, Hibbard K Aet al., 2010. The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment.Nature, 463(7282): 747-756.Advances in the science and observation of climate change are providing a clearer understanding of the inherent variability of Earth's climate system and its likely response to human and natural influences. The implications of climate change for the environment and society will depend not only on the response of the Earth system to changes in radiative forcings, but also on how humankind responds through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Extensive uncertainties exist in future forcings of and responses to climate change, necessitating the use of scenarios of the future to explore the potential consequences of different response options. To date, such scenarios have not adequately examined crucial possibilities, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and have relied on research processes that slowed the exchange of information among physical, biological and social scientists. Here we describe a new process for creating plausible scenarios to investigate some of the most challenging and important questions about climate change confronting the global community.

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[37]
Nakicenovic N, Alcamo J, Davis G et al., 2000.Special Report on Emissions Scenarios:A Special Report of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

[38]
Nedkov S, Burkhard B, 2012. Flood regulating ecosystem services: Mapping supply and demand, in the Etropole municipality, Bulgaria.Ecological Indicators, 21: 67-79.Floods exert significant pressure on human societies. Assessments of an ecosystem's capacity to regulate and to prevent floods relative to human demands for flood regulating ecosystem services can provide important information for environmental management. In this study, the capacities of different ecosystems to regulate floods were assessed through investigations of water retention functions of the vegetation and soil cover. The use of the catchment based hydrologic model KINEROS and the GIS AGWA tool provided data about peak rivers’ flows and the capability of different land cover types to “capture” and regulate some parts of the water. Based on spatial land cover units originating from CORINE and further data sets, these regulating ecosystem services were quantified and mapped. Resulting maps show the ecosystems’ flood regulating service capacities in the case study area of the Malki Iskar river basin above the town of Etropole in the northern part of Bulgaria. There, the number of severe flood events causing significant damages in the settlements and infrastructure has been increasing during the last few years. Maps of demands for flood regulating ecosystem services in the study region were compiled based on a digital elevation model, land use information and accessibility data. Finally, the flood regulating ecosystem service supply and demand data were merged in order to produce a map showing regional supply-demand balances. The resulting map of flood regulation supply capacities shows that the Etropole municipality's area has relatively high capacities for flood regulation. Areas of high and very high relevant capacities cover about 34% of the study area. The flood regulation ecosystem service demand map shows that areas of low or no relevant demands far exceed the areas of high and very high demands, which comprise only 0.6% of the municipality's area. According to the flood regulation supply-demand balance map, areas of high relevant demands are located in places of low relevant supply capacities. The results show that the combination of data from different sources with hydrological modeling provides a suitable data base for the assessment of complex function–service–benefit relations.

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[39]
Nelson E, Mendoza G, Regetz Jet al., 2009. Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales.Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(1): 4-11.Nature provides a wide range of benefits to people. There is increasing consensus about the importance of incorporating these “ecosystem services” into resource management decisions, but quantifying the levels and values of these services has proven difficult. We use a spatially explicit modeling tool, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), to predict changes in ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and commodity production levels. We apply InVEST to stakeholder-defined scenarios of land-use/land-cover change in the Willamette Basin, Oregon. We found that scenarios that received high scores for a variety of ecosystem services also had high scores for biodiversity, suggesting there is little tradeoff between biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Scenarios involving more development had higher commodity production values, but lower levels of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. However, including payments for carbon sequestration alleviates this ...

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[40]
Ouyang Z, Zheng H, Xiao Yet al., 2016. Improvements in ecosystem services from investments in natural capital.Science, 352(6292): 1455-1459.In response to ecosystem degradation from rapid economic development, China began investing heavily in protecting and restoring natural capital starting in 2000. We report on China’s first national ecosystem assessment (2000–2010), designed to quantify and help manage change in ecosystem services, including food production, carbon sequestration, soil retention, sandstorm prevention, water retention, flood mitigation, and provision of habitat for biodiversity. Overall, ecosystem services improved from 2000 to 2010, apart from habitat provision. China’s national conservation policies contributed significantly to the increases in those ecosystem services.

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[41]
Pappalardo S E, Otto S, Gasparini Vet al., 2016. Mitigation of herbicide runoff as an ecosystem service from a constructed surface flow wetland.Hydrobiologia, 774(1): 193-202.Ecosystem services provided by wetland systems presently play a pivotal role in intensive cropland as water purification from agricultural pollution. A field trial was conducted in 2014 to evaluate...

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[42]
Piao S, Ciais P, Huang Yet al., 2010. The impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in China.Nature, 467(7311): 43-51.China is the world's most populous country and a major emitter of greenhouse gases. Consequently, much research has focused on China's influence on climate change but somewhat less has been written about the impact of climate change on China. China experienced explosive economic growth in recent decades, but with only 7% of the world's arable land available to feed 22% of the world's population, China's economy may be vulnerable to climate change itself. We find, however, that notwithstanding the clear warming that has occurred in China in recent decades, current understanding does not allow a clear assessment of the impact of anthropogenic climate change on China's water resources and agriculture and therefore China's ability to feed its people. To reach a more definitive conclusion, future work must improve regional climate simulations-especially of precipitation-and develop a better understanding of the managed and unmanaged responses of crops to changes in climate, diseases, pests and atmospheric constituents.

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[43]
Piao S, Friedlingstein P, Ciais Pet al., 2007. Changes in climate and land use have a larger direct impact than rising CO2 on global river runoff trends.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(39): 15242-15247.

[44]
Popp A, Calvin K, Fujimori Set al., 2017. Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways.Global Environmental Change, 42(Suppl. C): 331-345.

[45]
Runting R K, Bryan B A, Dee L Eet al., 2017. Incorporating climate change into ecosystem service assessments and decisions: A review.Global Change Biology, 23(1): 28-41.Climate change is having a significant impact on ecosystem services and is likely to become increasingly important as this phenomenon intensifies. Future impacts can be difficult to assess as they often involve long timescales, dynamic systems with high uncertainties, and are typically confounded by other drivers of change. Despite a growing literature on climate change impacts on ecosystem services, no quantitative syntheses exist. Hence, we lack an overarching understanding of the impacts of climate change, how they are being assessed, and the extent to which other drivers, uncertainties, and decision making are incorporated. To address this, we systematically reviewed the peer-reviewed literature that assesses climate change impacts on ecosystem services at subglobal scales. We found that the impact of climate change on most types of services was predominantly negative (59% negative, 24% mixed, 4% neutral, 13% positive), but varied across services, drivers, and assessment methods. Although uncertainty was usually incorporated, there were substantial gaps in the sources of uncertainty included, along with the methods used to incorporate them. We found that relatively few studies integrated decision making, and even fewer studies aimed to identify solutions that were robust to uncertainty. For management or policy to ensure the delivery of ecosystem services, integrated approaches that incorporate multiple drivers of change and account for multiple sources of uncertainty are needed. This is undoubtedly a challenging task, but ignoring these complexities can result in misleading assessments of the impacts of climate change, suboptimal management outcomes, and the inefficient allocation of resources for climate adaptation.

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[46]
Scholes R J, 2016. Climate change and ecosystem services.Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 7(4): 537-550.Studies of the impacts of climate change cover three broad areas: direct effects on humans, their enterprises, and assets; effects on natural systems; and effects on humans via natural systems. ‘Ecosystem services’ fall into the latter category. Future climates continue to allow ecosystem services to be delivered and consumed, in some cases at a level greater than in the past, and in others degraded relative to their historic supply. Across a wide range of ecosystem services, the losses exceed the gains for magnitudes and rates of climate change projected under low-mitigation scenarios. On balance, global mean temperature (GMT) rises greater than 2°C above preindustrial have a spatially patchy but net negative effect on many ecosystem services. The negative impacts occur in many places and affect most people. This apparent asymmetry of impact is hypothesized to have three causes: the rapidity of climate change relative to adaptive processes in social and ecological systems; the exposure of societies to climates not experienced during the period over which complex, agriculturally dependent human societies developed; and the approach toward limits in the Earth system. Covariates of climate change—especially rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and ongoing land transformation—are an inextricable part of the projected loss of services in the coming century and the projected shortfall between supply and demand is strongly demand-driven. The geographical distributions of ecosystem service supply and demand are unequal, and becoming more so. WIREs Clim Change 2016, 7:537–550. doi: 10.1002/wcc.404 <p>For further resources related to this article, please visit the

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[47]
Sonter L J, Johnson J A, Nicholson C Cet al., 2017. Multi-site interactions: Understanding the offsite impacts of land use change on the use and supply of ecosystem services.Ecosystem Services, 23: 158-164.61Impacts of land use change on ecosystem services are complicated by spatial dynamics.61Here we describe one type of spatial dynamic: multi-site interactions (MSI).61A review of literature on nature-based recreation suggests evidence of MSI is lacking.61We propose a MSI conceptual framework and apply it to 3 ecosystem services.

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[48]
Sturck J, Poortinga A, Verburg P H, 2014. Mapping ecosystem services: The supply and demand of flood regulation services in Europe.Ecological Indicators, 38: 198-211.Ecosystem services (ES) feature highly distinctive spatial and temporal patterns of distribution, quantity, and flows. The flow of ecosystem goods and services to beneficiaries plays a decisive role in the valuation of ES and the successful implementation of the ES concept in environmental planning. This is particularly relevant to regulating services where demands emerge often spatially separated from supply. However, spatial patterns of both supply and demand are rarely incorporated in ES assessments on continental scales. In this paper, we present an ES modeling approach with low data demand, fit to be employed in scenario analysis and on multiple scales. We analyze flood regulation services at a European scale by explicitly addressing the spatial distribution of ES demand. A flood regulation supply indicator is developed based on scenario runs with a hydrological model in representative river catchments, incorporating detailed information on land, cover, land use and management. Land use sensitive flood damage estimates in the European Union (EU) are employed to develop a spatial indicator for flood regulation demand. Findings are transferred to the EU territory to create a map of the current supply of flood regulation and the potential supply under conditions of natural vegetation. Regions with a high capacity to provide flood regulation are mainly characterized by large patches of natural vegetation or extensive agriculture. The main factor limiting supply on a continental scale is a low water holding capacity of the soil. Flood regulation demand is highest in central Europe, at the foothills of the Alps and upstream of agglomerations. We were able to identify areas with a high potential capacity to provide flood regulation in conjunction with land use modifications. When combined with spatial patterns of current supply and demand, we could identify priority areas for investments in ES flood regulation supply through conservation and land use planning. We found that only in a fraction of the EU river catchments exhibiting a high demand, significant increases in flood regulation supply are achievable by means of land use modifications.

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[49]
Sturck J, Schulp C J E, Verburg P H, 2015. Spatio-temporal dynamics of regulating ecosystem services in Europe: The role of past and future land use change.Applied Geography, 63: 121-135.61We quantified land change impacts on two regulating ecosystem services (1900–2040).61We quantified (mis-)matches of ecosystem service supply and demand.61Future demands increase rapidly while potential to increase supply is modest under scenarios.

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[50]
Sun F X, Lü Y H, Fu B Jet al., 2016. Hydrological services by mountain ecosystems in Qilian Mountain of China: A review.Chinese Geographical Science, 26(2): 174-187.Hydrological service is a hot issue in the current researches of ecosystem service, particularly in the upper reaches of mountain rivers in dry land areas, where the Qilian Mountain is a representative one. The Qilian Mountain, where forest, shrubland and grassland consist of its main ecosystems, can provide fresh water and many other ecosystem services, through a series of eco-hydrological process such as precipitation interception, soil water storage, and fresh water provision. Thus, monitoring water regulation and assessing the hydrological service of the Qilian Mountain are meaningful and helpful for the healthy development of the lower reaches of arid and semi-arid areas. In recent 10 years, hydrological services have been widely researched in terms of scale and landscape pattern, including water conservation, hydrological responses to afforestation and their ecological effects. This study, after analyzing lots of current models and applications of geographical information system (GIS) in hydrological services, gave a scientific and reasonable evaluation of mountain ecosystem in eco-hydrological services, by employing the combination of international forefronts and contentious issues into the Qilian Mountain. Assessments of hydrological services at regional or larger scales are limited compared with studies within watershed scale in the Qilian Mountain. In our evaluation results of forest ecosystems, it is concluded that long-term observation and dynamic monitoring of different types of ecosystem are indispensable, and the hydrological services and the potential variation in water supplement on regional and large scales should be central issues in the future research.

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[51]
Thom D, Rammer W, Seidl R, 2017. Disturbances catalyze the adaptation of forest ecosystems to changing climate conditions.Global Change Biology, 23(1): 269-282.The rates of anthropogenic climate change substantially exceed those at which forest ecosystems – dominated by immobile, long‐lived organisms – are able to adapt. The resulting maladaptation of forests has potentially detrimental effects on ecosystem functioning. Furthermore, as many forest‐dwelling species are highly dependent on the prevailing tree species, a delayed response of the latter to a changing climate can contribute to an extinction debt and mask climate‐induced biodiversity loss. However, climate change will likely also intensify forest disturbances. Here, we tested the hypothesis that disturbances foster the reorganization of ecosystems and catalyze the adaptation of forest composition to climate change. Our specific objectives were (i) to quantify the rate of autonomous forest adaptation to climate change, (ii) examine the role of disturbance in the adaptation process, and (iii) investigate spatial differences in climate‐induced species turnover in an unmanaged mountain forest landscape (Kalkalpen National Park, Austria). Simulations with a process‐based forest landscape model were performed for 36 unique combinations of climate and disturbance scenarios over 100002years. We found that climate change strongly favored European beech and oak species (currently prevailing in mid‐ to low‐elevation areas), with novel species associations emerging on the landscape. Yet, it took between 357 and 70602years before the landscape attained a dynamic equilibrium with the climate system. Disturbances generally catalyzed adaptation and decreased the time needed to attain equilibrium by up to 21102years. However, while increasing disturbance frequency and severity accelerated adaptation, increasing disturbance size had the opposite effect. Spatial analyses suggest that particularly the lowest and highest elevation areas will be hotspots of future species change. We conclude that the growing maladaptation of forests to climate and the long lead times of autonomous adaptation need to be considered more explicitly in the ongoing efforts to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services provisioning.

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[52]
Trenberth K E, 2011. Changes in precipitation with climate change.Climate Research, 47(1/2): 123-138.

[53]
USDA, 1985. National Engineering Handbook, Section 4, Hydrology. United States Department of Agriculture, Soil and Conservation Service, Washington, DC.

[54]
Walz A, Braendle J M, Lang D Jet al., 2014. Experience from downscaling IPCC-SRES scenarios to specific national-level focus scenarios for ecosystem service management.Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 86: 21-32.61We downscale SRES scenarios for ecosystem service management in Swiss mountain regions.61The formal procedure used combines expert judgement with quantitative assessment.61It holds an analytical power untypical for common scenario techniques.61Still susceptible to personal judgement, it is reproducible and well-documented.

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[55]
Watson K B, Ricketts T, Galford Get al., 2016. Quantifying flood mitigation services: The economic value of Otter Creek wetlands and floodplains to Middlebury, VT.Ecological Economics, 130: 16-24.61We present a simple approach to quantifying and valuing flood mitigation services.61Wetlands and floodplains reduce flood damages by 54–78%.61The economic value of this service warrants consideration in land use decisions.

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[56]
Wang P T, Zhang L W, Li Y Jet al., 2017. Spatio-temporal characteristics of the trade-off and synergy relationships among multiple ecosystem services in the upper reaches of Hanjiang River Basin.Acta Geographica Sinica, 72(11): 131-142. (in Chinese)The research on the interactions among multiple ecosystem services(ES) is a hotspot. Most of the previous studies focused on the qualitative description of ES interactions,however, there have been relatively few studies on spatially explicit and quantitative assessment of ES interactions. In this paper, we mapped the ecosystem service of soil conservation(SC), net primary production(NPP) and water yield(WY) in the upper reaches of Hanjiang River Basin(URHR) based on the land use and land cover(LULC), NDVI, soil properties and observed climate data covering 2000-2013. Moreover, we quantitatively assessed the variation characteristics of interactions among different ES with a spatio-temporal statistical framework by applying the partial correlation analysis at a pixel scale. The results are shown as follows:(1) From 2000 to 2013, the mean annual SC was 434.20 t·hm-2·yr-1, and the mean annual WY was 250.34 mm. They also presented a rising tendency at the rate of 16.10 t·hm-2·yr-1 and 3.79 mm·yr-1, respectively. However, the mean annual NPP was 854.11 g C·m-2·yr-1, and presented a decreasing tendency at the rate of 8.54 g C·m-2·yr-1.(2) Spatially, SC was high in the North-South mountain area, while it was low in the Middle valley region. Similarly,the NPP in the Middle valley region was lower than that of other regions. However, the WY increased from north to south.(3) The three pairwise ES presented different interactions. Both the interaction between SC and NPP and that between SC and WY presented as trade-off,accounting for 62.77% and 71.60% of the total area, respectively. On the contrary, the interaction between NPP and WY was prone to synergies, accounting for 62.89% of the total area.(4) Pairwise ES in different land cover types also presented a different interaction. As for woodland, wetland, cropland, artificial land and bare land, SC and NPP, as well as SC and WY both presented trade-off, while WY and NPP presented synergy. Specially, in grassland, all the three pairwise ES presented a trade-off relationship. Therefore, spatially explicit and quantitative assessment of ES interactions are more helpful for revealing the temporal nonlinear evolution, and the spatial heterogeneity of ES interactions. This analysis framework also contributes to the regional sustainable land management and the optimization of multiple ES conservation.

[57]
Yang C, Wang N, Wang S, 2017. A comparison of three predictor selection methods for statistical downscaling.International Journal of Climatology, 37(3): 1238-1249.Abstract Three predictor selection methods [correlation analysis, partial correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis (SRA)] that are commonly used for statistical downscaling are compared in terms of the uncertainty assessments of their downscaled results using the same statistical downscaling model (SDSM). Uncertainty is assessed by comparing several statistical indices for observed and downscaled daily precipitation, daily maximum and minimum temperature, monthly means and variances of daily precipitation and daily temperature. Besides these, the distributions of monthly mean of daily precipitation, monthly dry and wet days also are considered. The analysis employs the SDSM and 54 years (1961-2014) of observed daily precipitation and temperature together with National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis predictors. A comparison of the different methods for selecting predictors indicates that SRA is slight better than other two methods in most statistical indices.

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[58]
Yang L, Zhang L, Li Yet al., 2015. Water-related ecosystem services provided by urban green space: A case study in Yixing City (China).Landscape and Urban Planning, 136: 40-51.With the development of urbanization, green space in urban areas has received widespread attention and become an important symbol of urban ecosystem health. Urban green space plays a positive role in water regulation and purification, but this function is often ignored by municipal authorities. Based on remote-sensing image interpretation and practical investigations in Yixing (China), this study evaluated the water regulation and purification functions performed by urban green space, using the modified Soil Conservation Service model, in conjunction with relevant experimental data. The results show that during the period 2007 to 2009, the average volume of rainfall stored by the urban green space in Yixing was 5.3×107m3yr611, which represented more than 88% of the rainfall received. The average figures for chemical oxygen demand (CODCr), total nitrogen (TN), ammoniacal nitrogen (NH4–N), and total phosphorus (TP) in rainfall that were removed by green space during 2007 to 2009 were 233.6×103kgyr611, 70.9×103kgyr611, 12.6×103kgyr611, and 1.7×103kgyr611, respectively. Differences were found between the water regulation and purification performed by urban green space inside built-up areas and those performed outside built-up areas, which relate to the importance attached to green space in the two types of area. This research will contribute to an understanding of the role that green space plays in water regulation and purification, and in the scientific management of urban green space.

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[59]
Yuan Q, Wu S, Dai Eet al., 2017. NPP vulnerability of the potential vegetation of China to climate change in the past and future.Journal of Geographical Sciences, 27(2): 131-142.Using the Integrated Biosphere Simulator, a dynamic vegetation model, this study initially simulated the net primary productivity (NPP) dynamics of China’s potential vegetation in the past 55 years (1961–2015) and in the future 35 years (2016–2050). Then, taking the NPP of the potential vegetation in average climate conditions during 1986–2005 as the basis for evaluation, this study examined whether the potential vegetation adapts to climate change or not. Meanwhile, the degree of inadaptability was evaluated. Finally, the NPP vulnerability of the potential vegetation was evaluated by synthesizing the frequency and degrees of inadaptability to climate change. In the past 55 years, the NPP of desert ecosystems in the south of the Tianshan Mountains and grassland ecosystems in the north of China and in western Tibetan Plateau was prone to the effect of climate change. The NPP of most forest ecosystems was not prone to the influence of climate change. The low NPP vulnerability to climate change of the evergreen broad-leaved and coniferous forests was observed. Furthermore, the NPP of the desert ecosystems in the north of the Tianshan Mountains and grassland ecosystems in the central and eastern Tibetan Plateau also had low vulnerability to climate change. In the next 35 years, the NPP vulnerability to climate change would reduce the forest–steppe in the Songliao Plain, the deciduous broad-leaved forests in the warm temperate zone, and the alpine steppe in the central and western Tibetan Plateau. The NPP vulnerability would significantly increase of the temperate desert in the Junggar Basin and the alpine desert in the Kunlun Mountains. The NPP vulnerability of the subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests would also increase. The area of the regions with increased vulnerability would account for 27.5% of China.

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[60]
Zhang B, Li W H, Xie G Det al., 2010. Water conservation of forest ecosystem in Beijing and its value.Ecological Economics, 69(7): 1416-1426.Under a scenario of global climate change, the water conservation function of Beijing's forest ecosystems has attracted considerable public attention. In this paper, the term of water conservation is described as a comprehensive regulation of forests on water resources through various hydrological processes, and grouped into three services, i.e., rainfall interception, soil water storage and fresh water provision. On the basis of Beijing's forest resource survey data and mathematical simulations, the function and the economic value of water conservation was estimated. The result showed that, the forest ecosystems of Beijing could intercept approximately 1.4302billion cubic meters of rainfall and 277.8202million cubic meters of soil water under ideal conditions, and supply 286.6702million cubic meters of fresh water, their economic values were estimated to be about 2.7702billion RMB(Chinese Currency, 8.28RMB = US$1), 2.1502billion RMB, and 315.3302million RMB, respectively. The total economic value of water conservation provided by Beijing's forests was 5.2302billion RMB, and the economic benefit per hectare was equal to 570402RMB. Furthermore, the spatial variation of water conservation functions and the monetary values of the main forest ecosystems in different locations in Beijing were analyzed, and the effects of water conservation provided by the forest ecosystem on the development of society and economy in Beijing were discussed. This work contributes to the realization and preservation of forest resources in Beijing.

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[61]
Zhang L, Lü Y, Fu Bet al., 2017. Uncertainties of two methods in selecting priority areas for protecting soil conservation service at regional scale.Sustainability, 9(9): 1577.

[62]
Zuo D, Xu Z, Yao Wet al., 2016. Assessing the effects of changes in land use and climate on runoff and sediment yields from a watershed in the Loess Plateau of China.Science of the Total Environment, 544: 238-250.61We analyze long-term variations of hydrology and sediment using three methods.61We detect hydrological changes using statistical tests, SWAT and land use maps.61Trend analysis shows significant decreasing trends of runoff and sediment load.61The Grain for Green Program has a significant effect on the changes.

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