ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Land Use Dynamics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1583841
The Impact of Ecological Vulnerability on Ecosystem Service Value and Threshold Identification: A Case Study of the Zhangjiakou-Chengde Area, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Hebei Minzu Normal University, Chengde, China
- 2Hebei Key Laboratory of Mountain Geological Environment, Chengde, China
- 3College of Beiyan Business, Hebei Minzu Normal University, Chengde, China
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Introduction: Understanding ecological vulnerability and its impact on ecosystem services is essential for promoting sustainable environmental management, particularly in ecologically fragile areas. This study focuses on the Zhangjiakou-Chengde area (ZC area), a representative ecologically sensitive area, and explores the mechanisms through which ecological vulnerability influences ecosystem service value.: Based on the evaluation results of the ecosystem service value (ESV) and the ecological vulnerability index (EVI), this study employs Geodetector and constraint line analysis methods to examine their interrelationships. Results: The results indicate that: (1) from 2000 to 2020, there was a significant negative spatial correlation between ESV and EVI in the ZC area, with clusters of low ESV-high EVI in the west and high ESV-low EVI in the east; (2) among all the driving factors of EVI, fractional vegetation cover, land use intensity index, average annual precipitation, and population density were identified as the most influential factors on ESV. These variables exhibited clear threshold effects: ESV initially increased with the variable but began to decline after a certain threshold was exceeded; and (3) EVI itself also demonstrated threshold effects on ESV. In 2000 and 2010, ESV growth slowed and then turned negative once EVI exceeded 0.41 and 0.36, respectively. By 2020, EVI showed a consistently suppressive effect on ESV.Discussion: These findings underscore the importance of identifying critical thresholds in ecosystem management to enhance the protection and sustainable improvement of ecosystem services in ecologically vulnerable areas.
Keywords: Ecological vulnerability, ecosystem service value, threshold effect, Driving factors, Ecologically fragile area
Received: 27 Feb 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Xue, Yang, Ren and Ju. 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: An-Qi Ju, College of Beiyan Business, Hebei Minzu Normal University, Chengde, China
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