Understanding driving mechanisms behind the supply-demand pattern of ecosystem services for land-use administration: Insights from a spatially explicit analysis

Uncovering the highly complex driving mechanisms behind ecosystem services (ESs) supply-demand matching relationships is of great significance for achieving sustainable eco-environment and land planning. Unfortunately, the effects within this process are still inadequate and spatially explicit knowledge of the surplus-deficit status for multiple ESs remain under-researched. The study area is the Bairin Left Banner, located in North East of China. In detail, a comprehensive framework was proposed to fill this research gap by coupling the assessment of ESs supply-demand, spatial correlations and driving analysis. The results showed that: (1) the surplus for all ESs was dominant in northern mountains covered with forests whereas deficit was observed in southern urban areas. Specifically, the spatially mismatched supply-demand pattern for habitat quality and carbon storage was predominant while that relation for soil conservation and water yield was spatially aligned in general. (2) the relationships between ESs supply and demand were affected by different socio-ecological factors with positive effects from natural drivers while negative influences from social factors on the whole. The supply-demand matching degrees for habitat quality and water yield were more susceptible to slope and population density. Precipitation and vegetation were proved to be dominant factors for controlling surplus of soil conservation while the supply-demand pattern for carbon storage was mainly affected by vegetation and population. (3) The results of multi-scale geographically weighted regression showed its superiority with more accurate estimations compared to traditional methods. Drastic human activities would adversely affect ESs supply-demand matching while abundant precipitation coupled with more vegetation could create favorable conditions for forming surplus ESs status. Based on these new findings, some land planning and eco-environment management measures were suggested to achieve the supply-demand coordination of various ESs in arid regions. The proposed framework could deliver deeper insights into the field of ESs supply-demand analysis and the targeted proposals were also valuable for policymaking worldwide.