Impacts of Land Use Change on Ecosystem Services Value in the Northeast China Transect (NECT)

Ecosystem services are basis of human living and development. Land use and its changes have deep effect on the ecosystem structure and functions, even its services. According to the different land use patterns in the Northeast China Transect (NECT), this paper selects Fusong county, Panshi city, Gongzhuling city, Tongliao city and Linxi county as typical regions and analyzes the effects of land use change on ecosystem services during the past 30 years by using the GIS and RS. This paper selects the evaluation method based on money. According to partial global ecosystem services value evaluation results obtained by Costanza et al. and the state of the study area, this paper uses per unit area ecosystem services value of Chinese terrestrial ecosystems to analyze the change of ecosystem services value in the study area. The result shows that the land use pattern has changed greatly in NECT from 1976 to 2000. The area of cultivated land and the town and construction land increased rapidly in Fusong county and Panshi city, while the woodland and grassland decreased greatly. The woodland and grassland tend to change into the cultivated land in Gongzhuling city. The area of woodland in Tongliao city increased and the grassland decreased, while it is on the contrary in Linxi county. This change is related to the policy implementation of converting slope farmland into forestland and grassland. Viewed from the land use degree, we can see that all typical counties have increased from 1976 to 2000, especially in Panshi city and Tongliao city. The analysis on ecosystem services indicates that per unit area ESV in different types of regions differs greatly. The fundamental distribution rule is, from big to small, the forest region, the farming-forest region, the pastoral region, the farming-pastoral region and the farming region respectively. This has close relationship with the ecological value coefficient of different land use types and the land use degrees. From the dynamic change, the ESV of the cultivated land, the woodland and the grassland all change greatly in all kinds of typical regions in NECT. The total value has tended to decrease in all regions except Tongliao city. The analysis on the sensitive coefficient shows that the ESV is short of flexibility in the study area and the result is credible.