Spatiotemporal dynamic analysis of forest ecosystem services using big data: A case study of Anhui province, central-eastern China

Although a large number of reviews have studied different scales of forest ecosystem services, few have concentrated on accounting the spatiotemporal dynamic changes of forest ecosystem services in a region. To make a more accurate accounting, this paper selects intense data sets that assess the physical quantity and value of forest ecosystem services in Anhui provinces from 2009 to 2014. Regulating and supporting services such as water conservation, carbon sequestration and oxygen release, soil conservation and air purification are included in the paper as variables. Optimize analysis was further conducted in order to identify the spatial and temporal heterogeneity during the study period. We establish a dynamic ecosystem services assessment model with the coefficient of spatial heterogeneity and coefficients of scarce resources and social development to analyze the trend of the value in Anhui province. This model is designed for comparisons of forest services in different scales in Anhui province. The results demonstrate that the total value of forest ecosystem services is beyond the previous estimation while using spatiotemporal visualization. The implications are that the evaluation of forest ecosystem services should be measured more accurately with the help of big data in the future. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.