The evaluation of ecosystem service value and its spatial change in the Yellow River Basin and suggestions from the ecological geology perspectives

Yellow River basin has significant ecological value for China, and hence the ecosystem service within the basin is very important. In this paper, the authors chose the municipalities through which the Yellow River is flowing as the study areas, assessed the value of ecosystem services in the basin, and detected the hotspot of the ecosystem services and resilience of the ecosystem. This is a fundamental issue for ecological environment protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River basin. Based on ARCGIS software and Google Earth Engine platform, the authors quantitatively evaluated the changing value of ecosystem services in Yellow river basin and its spatial dynamics, then put forward several suggestions for eco-geological arrangement. The results show that the dominant ecosystem services in the Yellow River basin are hydrological regulation, climate regulation, and soil conservation. For the whole basin, the ecosystem services value in the Yellow River basin increased 33.4% from 2000 to 2015, within which that of the upper stream areas like Yushu-Aba mountain areas decreased significantly, that of the loess plateau increased significantly, and that of the lower river basin decreased slightly. The ecological environment and economic development have low coordination state. There is a spatial mismatch between the ecosystem services supply and demand in the lower river basin. To restore and maintain the ecosystem services and function in the Yellow River basin, the authors put forward several suggestions from the ecological geology perspectives: carrying out ecological geological survey, monitoring and evaluation based on earth system science theory; creating a systematic ecological geology survey institution for the whole basin; developing a system of survey, monitoring and management to achieve the "smart river basin"; evaluating the carrying capacity of the river basin through the time; focusing on critical process, focal regions, key factors and then deploying the ecological geologic survey. The authors' aim is to improve the ecosystem services value, and optimize the land use configuration of the whole river basin.