ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1587167
This article is part of the Research TopicEcological Security and Ecological Disasters: Defining the Fields and Applications for the Future Environmental Resilience and ConservationView all articles
Balancing ecosystem services supply-flow-demand for watershed ecological security: A case study of the Hai River Basin, China
Provisionally accepted
- Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
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Abstract：Water ecological security is of great significance in watershed management for sustainable development and social stability. For the ecological security of a watershed, the key lies in the effective matching of the supply and demand of water-related ecosystem services, as well as the intricate trade-offs among different services. This study focuses on China's water-scarce Haihe River Basin to investigate and assess the dynamic supply-demand relationship, analyze the evolution law of service flow, and quantify the trade-offs between different services. The goal is to identify strategies for balancing service supply and demand, maintaining a stable flow, and exploring potential management interventions to mitigate negative trade-offs and enhance synergies, thereby achieving the basin's ecological security. The key findings are: (1) Over the past 20 years, WCS and SCS supply increased overall but declined locally. WCS declined in the Yongding River Basin and parts of North China Plain, while SCS decreased in Yanshan Mountains and North China Plain. WCS demand dropped in the Plain, covering 40% of the basin, while SCS demand remained high in mountainous areas due to erosion. (2) High-value areas of WCS flow are in the Zhangwei River Basin's mountain-plain transition zone, SCS flow in the North China Plain, and WPS in high-altitude mountain areas. WPS shows insufficient flow, impeding supply-demand balance. (3) Regarding ES supply-demand matching result, WCS deficit area expanded due to high water demand in human-activity-intensive areas. SCS has supply-demand imbalances in both mountains and plains, and WPS shows a serious basin-wide deficit. (4) In service trade-offs, WCS and SCS maintain a strong correlation (R≥0.90). The synergy between WCS and WPS changed due to agricultural pollution and riparian degradation. There's no significant correlation between SCS and WPS. The innovation of this study lies in focusing on the supply-demand matching and spatial trade-offs of services in watershed ecological security, which offers valuable insights for optimizing water ecosystem management practices and informing policy decisions.
Keywords: ecosystem services, Supply demand matching, Service Flows, trade-offs, Watershed ecological security
Received: 04 Mar 2025; Accepted: 02 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Rong, Zheng and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yuejing Rong, Research Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
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