The influence of land use and land cover changes on value of urban ecosystem services in Wuhan, China

Ecosystem services refer to the conditions and benefits that ecosystems can provide to humans and during the process of maintaining their own material cycle and energy conversion (Postel, Bawa, et al., 2012). An ecosystem can provide services to human society and economic development in different forms so that human living environment can be purified, climate conditions can be regulated, and development needs can be met (Postel, Bawa, et al., 2012). At the same time, the ecosystem system can support the development of biological diversity through its own carrying capacity and provide more types of ecological services to human beings, bringing great utilization value to human beings. Therefore, the economic construction of cities mostly depends on the urban ecosystem system (Peng, 2016). However, due to the rapid development of cities, the expansion of population, the rapid change of land use and other problems, the phenomenon of excessive waste of resources and rapid deterioration of ecological environment has resulted in an obvious decline in the value of urban ecosystem services (Yang, Chang, et al., 2008). Therefore, analyzing the value of ecosystem services from a quantitative perspective and defining the relationship between human activities and natural ecological system is conducive to ensuring the sustainable society and the benign development of the urban ecosystem. The main purpose of this thesis is to study how changes in land use types can have an influence on urban ecosystem services value. In order to study this issue, three sub-questions were raised. (1) What changes happened to the land use types of Wuhan during 2008-2018’ (2) To what extent has Wuhan's UESV changed during 2008-2018’ (3) How does the change of LUCC in Wuhan explain the change of UESV in Wuhan during 2008-2018’ This thesis selects Wuhan, a fast-growing economy in China, as a research area. Wuhan is a long-established city in China. After thousands of years of development, it has made great progress. In the past development process, the dependence on land is the root cause of human beings changing the appearance of natural ecosystems (He, Li, et al., 2015). Located in the central part of China, Wuhan is dominated by plains with a small number of low hills (Wuhan Government, 2018). Based on the remote sensing interpretation data of 2008, 2013 and 2018, quantitatively analyses the changes of land use in Wuhan and the changes in ecosystem value caused by it, and discusses its value and the relationship between the structure of land use types, In the end, provides a reference for decision-making on the sustainable use of regional land resources and the construction of ecological environment. The results show that the relevant degree of the surface water body and cultivated land to urban ecosystem services is higher than other land use types, ranking the first and second, followed by forest land and built-up area. Keywords: Urban ecosystem services, Urban ecosystem services value, Land use and land cover change, Evaluation of UESV, Evaluation of LUCC, Wuhan