Ecological compensation mechanism in Chinese river basins: Evidence from the prefecture-level administrative regions

Abstract Different from previous studies which focused on provincial governments as the subjects of ecological compensation, we study the city-based ecological compensation mechanism in Chinese river basins. The value of water ecosystem service equivalents calculated based on remote sensing data is used to judge whether a city is an ecological protector or an ecological destroyer. The results showed that as time changed, the value of the water ecosystem service equivalents of different cities changed differently, and in the mass, the number of cities as ecological protectors was increasing and the ecological protectors showed agglomeration effect in space. Cities located on the edge of more than one river basin may have "dual identity", which means that they may be ecological protector for one basin but ecological destroyer for another basin. In words, it provides an open analytical framework for compensation standard negotiation based on the value of water ecosystem service equivalents from the perspective of cities in the transboundary compensation both inside and outside the basin.