agricultural parameters
; article
; China
; climate
; climate change
; ecosystem
; paleoenvironment
; poverty
; priority journal
; socioeconomics
; Animals
; Biodiversity
; China
; Conservation of Natural Resources
; Ecosystem
; Geologic Sediments
; History, 19th Century
; History, 20th Century
; History, 21st Century
; Humans
; Lakes
; Marine Biology
; Time Factors
英文摘要:
In China, and elsewhere, long-term economic development and poverty alleviation need to be balanced against the likelihood of ecological failure. Here, we show how paleoenvironmental records can provide important multidecadal perspectives on ecosystem services (ES). More than 50 different paleoenvironmental proxy records can be mapped to a wide range of ES categories and subcategories. Lake sediments are particularly suitable for reconstructing records of regulating services, such as soil stability, sediment regulation, and water purification, which are often less well monitored. We demonstrate the approach using proxy records from two sets of lake sediment sequences in the lower Yangtze basin covering the period 1800-2006, combined with recent socioeconomic and climate records. We aggregate the proxy records into a regional regulating services index to show that rapid economic growth and population increases since the 1950s are strongly coupled to environmental degradation. Agricultural intensification from the 1980s onward has been the main driver for reducing rural poverty but has led to an accelerated loss of regulating services. In the case of water purification, there is strong evidence that a threshold has been transgressed within the last two decades. The current steep trajectory of the regulating services index implies that regional land management practices across a large agricultural tract of eastern China are critically unsustainable.
Dearing, J.A., Palaeoecological Laboratory, Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom; Yang, X., State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Dong, X., State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Zhang, E., State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Chen, X., State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Langdon, P.G., Palaeoecological Laboratory, Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom; Zhang, K., Palaeoecological Laboratory, Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom; Zhang, W., State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China; Dawson, T.P., School of the Environment, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, United Kingdom
Recommended Citation:
Dearing J.A.,Yang X.,Dong X.,et al. Extending the timescale and range of ecosystem services through paleoenvironmental analyses; exemplifiedin the lower Yangtze basin[J]. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,2012-01-01,109(18)