Assessing Integrated Ecological Effects of land use change based on Ecosystem Services

Land use / land cover change (LUCC) is gaining recognitions as one of the key components and driving forces of global environmental change. Ecological effect of LUCC is regarded as the very reason for the importance of LUCC to global environmental change. And ecosystem services assessment of associated land use types are always applied to evaluating the integrated ecological effects of LUCC. However, all the studies failed to discuss the ecological effects of land use change in spatial patterns, but explored the change of ecosystem services associated with area ratio change of land use types. In this case study in Lijiang County of China, ecological value of each land use type was assessed according to global average value of ecosystem services (Costanza et al., 1997), and the coefficients of spatial neighboring effects on ecosystem services for each land use type were developed to quantify ecological effects of land use pattern change, so as to make an assessment on integrated ecological effects of land use change in quantitative structure and spatial patterns.