Identifying Ecosystem Service Critical Area

The purpose of this study was to establish a spatial multi-scale integrated assessment framework for critical areas of ecosystem service supply and demand, in order to provide theoretical support for regional ecological protection planning and refined management. Taking the typical hilly area of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in China as an example, based on the assessment matrix of land use and ecosystem services, we used the method of spatial heterogeneity assessment and self-organizing feature mapping (SOFM) to explore the identification and regionalization of critical areas of ecosystem services at regional and small scales. The results show that there was spatial heterogeneity and scale effects of ecosystem services under the two scales. The small-scale supply–demand pattern was greatly affected by microtopography and land use patterns, and the importance of ecosystem services was as follows: forest area in the upper part of the mountain > orchard and dry area in the middle and lower part of the mountain > valley farming area > flat town and farming area. The regional-scale supply–demand pattern was greatly affected by landscape structure, location conditions and social economy, and the importance of ecosystem services was as follows: south > west > north > central. The SOFM network quantitatively identified four types of ecological areas with clear dominant functions at regional and small scales. The balance between supply and demand in the studied ecosystem service areas was I < II < III < IV, in which IV was the critical area in terms of supply and I was the critical area in terms of demand. This assessment framework can improve the spatial accuracy and objectivity of the quantification and mapping of ecosystem services, and provide new ideas for multi-scale identification and expression of ecosystem services.