Spatiotemporal interaction between ecosystem services and urbanization: Case study of Nanjing City, China

Ecosystem services (ES) are benefits derived from ecosystems and have great significance in sustainable development. Rapid transformations of materials, energy and information flow in ecosystems are impacted by urbanization. Some pressures damage the balance of the ecosystem, such as transformations of land use and changes to industrial structure. Therefore, a clear understanding of the relationship between ES and urbanization provides new insight into urban sustainable development planning and decision-making. Although plentiful literature has focused on the topic, few studies assess the spatiotemporal interactions between ES and urbanization. Nanjing lies in the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone, China and has been experiencing rapid urbanization. We use decoupling and spatial correlation analysis to discuss the spatiotemporal interaction among four ecosystem services and urbanization in Nanjing. The results show that there is mostly weak decoupling between ecosystem services and urbanization; the index of urbanization and ecosystem services exhibits spatial autocorrelation not only by themselves but also with each other; urbanization damages ecosystem services, especially in the food supply, which declined by 17%. These results indicate that we can predict changes to ecosystem services through urbanization, optimize space provisioning and human activities, enrich studies on ecosystem services and guide sustainable urban development.