Land-use configuration has significant impacts on water-related ecosystem services

The impacts of land-use change on ecosystem services (ESs) are currently a high profile issue, but the impacts of land-use configuration change on ESs have not been well studied so far. Taking the headwaters' region of the Dongjiang River (HRDR) as an example, the current study designed a specific framework for exploring the impacts of land-use configuration change on ESs independently. The Conversion of Land Use and its Effects at Small regional extent (CLUE-S) model was integrated with the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model to simulate water conservation services (WCS), nutrient retention services (NRS), and sediment retention services (SRS) in HRDR for nine planning scenarios. The main conclusions are: (1) land-use configuration change has significant impacts on the provision of WCS, NRS, and SRS; (2) mean patch area of landscape is the main factor affecting the provision of WCS, while mean slope of woodland is the main factor affecting the provision of NRS and SRS; and (3) none of the nine projected land-use configurations could simultaneously maximize the provision of WCS, NRS, and SRS; overall, the ninth land-use configuration was the optimal configuration. The current study bridges the gaps between land-use configuration change and the provision of ESs, and emphasizes the urgency of taking land-use configuration into consideration in future land-use planning to improve the provision of water-related ESs.