TY - JOUR

T1 - Socioeconomic influences on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being

T2 - a quantitative application of the DPSIR model in Jiangsu, China

AU - Hou, Ying

AU - Zhou, Shudong

AU - Burkhard, Benjamin

AU - Müller, Felix

N1 - Funding information: The work of this paper is supported by Key Projects of the National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of China ( 13&ZD160 , 11&ZD046 ), Key Projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 70833001 ), China Agricultural Research System ( CARS-14-10B ), Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China ( 20120097110034 ) as well as the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China ( XNC2012001 ). We are grateful for the time and efforts from the editors and the anonymous reviewers on improving our manuscript.

PY - 2014/8/15

Y1 - 2014/8/15

N2 - One focus of ecosystem service research is the connection between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being as well as the socioeconomic influences on them. Despite existing investigations, exact impacts from the human system on the dynamics of biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being are still uncertain because of the insufficiency of the respective quantitative analyses. Our research aims are discerning the socioeconomic influences on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being and demonstrating mutual impacts between these items. We propose a DPSIR framework coupling ecological integrity, ecosystem services as well as human well-being and suggest DPSIR indicators for the case study area Jiangsu, China. Based on available statistical and surveying data, we revealed the factors significantly impacting biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being in the research area through factor analysis and correlation analysis, using the 13 prefecture-level cities of Jiangsu as samples. The results show that urbanization and industrialization in the urban areas have predominant positive influences on regional biodiversity, agricultural productivity and tourism services as well as rural residents' living standards. Additionally, the knowledge, technology and finance inputs for agriculture also have generally positive impacts on these system components. Concerning regional carbon storage, non-cropland vegetation cover obviously plays a significant positive role. Contrarily, the expansion of farming land and the increase of total food production are two important negative influential factors of biodiversity, ecosystem's food provisioning service capacity, regional tourism income and the well-being of the rural population. Our study provides a promising approach based on the DPSIR model to quantitatively capture the socioeconomic influential factors of biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being for human-environmental systems at regional scales.

AB - One focus of ecosystem service research is the connection between biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being as well as the socioeconomic influences on them. Despite existing investigations, exact impacts from the human system on the dynamics of biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being are still uncertain because of the insufficiency of the respective quantitative analyses. Our research aims are discerning the socioeconomic influences on biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being and demonstrating mutual impacts between these items. We propose a DPSIR framework coupling ecological integrity, ecosystem services as well as human well-being and suggest DPSIR indicators for the case study area Jiangsu, China. Based on available statistical and surveying data, we revealed the factors significantly impacting biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being in the research area through factor analysis and correlation analysis, using the 13 prefecture-level cities of Jiangsu as samples. The results show that urbanization and industrialization in the urban areas have predominant positive influences on regional biodiversity, agricultural productivity and tourism services as well as rural residents' living standards. Additionally, the knowledge, technology and finance inputs for agriculture also have generally positive impacts on these system components. Concerning regional carbon storage, non-cropland vegetation cover obviously plays a significant positive role. Contrarily, the expansion of farming land and the increase of total food production are two important negative influential factors of biodiversity, ecosystem's food provisioning service capacity, regional tourism income and the well-being of the rural population. Our study provides a promising approach based on the DPSIR model to quantitatively capture the socioeconomic influential factors of biodiversity, ecosystem services and human well-being for human-environmental systems at regional scales.

KW - Agriculture/statistics & numerical data

KW - Biodiversity

KW - China

KW - Cities

KW - Conservation of Natural Resources/methods

KW - Ecosystem

KW - Environmental Monitoring/methods

KW - Food Supply

KW - Humans

KW - Models, Theoretical

KW - Socioeconomic Factors

KW - Urbanization/trends

KW - Factor analysis

KW - Human-environmental systems

KW - Statistics

KW - DPSIR

KW - Ecosystem services cascade

KW - Indicators

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84902014259&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.05.071

DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.05.071

M3 - Article

C2 - 24914530

VL - 490

SP - 1012

EP - 1028

JO - Science of the Total Environment

JF - Science of the Total Environment

SN - 0048-9697

ER -