Change and correlation analysis of the supply-demand pattern of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Economic Belt

The continuous ecosystem services supply is an important foundation of the sustainable development of human society. With the development of the economy and the improvement in human life quality, a comprehensive consideration of the ecosystem service supply and human demand, and integrating them into natural resource management practices are vitally important to the China′s ecological civilization construction. However, most of the current studies focused on the supply of ecosystem services, and few studies did on the supply and demand of ecosystem services across regional scales. Taking the cross-regional Yangtze River Economic Belt as an example, the ecosystem services provision index(ESPI) and the land development index(LDI) were used to quantify the supply and demand of ecosystem services, and the ecosystem service supply and demand index(ESSDI) was proposed to analyze the spatiotemporal variation patterns and regional characteristics of the ecosystem service supply-demand pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis method were used to quantify and explore the correlation and regional differences in ecosystem service supply-demand patterns in the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The results showed that:(1) there was a significant difference of ecosystem services supply-demand pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in 2015, which was overloaded in the east and surplus in the west. The proportion of areas was the highest where the supply-demand patterns was better or best, accounting for 69.45% of the total area of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.(2) The spatial imbalance of the ecosystem services supply-demand pattern in the Yangtze River Economic Belt was obvious. 55.36% of the GDP and 31.41% of the population were concentrated in 7% of the areas where the ecosystem services supply-demand pattern was bad. A series of ecological protection and restoration projects in the Yangtze River Economic Belt were implemented during 2000-2015, which made the ecosystem services supply-demand pattern become better. The number of counties with a good supply-demand pattern increased by 43, meanwhile, the number of counties with a bad supply-demand pattern decreased by 58. Compared with the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the supply-demand pattern of ecosystem services in the upper and middle reaches was greatly improved.(3) The supply and demand of ecosystem services in the Yangtze River Eco