Rural–urban gradient analysis of ecosystem services supply and demand dynamics

Urban regions are important places of ecosystem service demands and, at the same time, are the primary source of global environmental impacts. Although there is broad agreement on the importance of incorporating the concept of ecosystem services into policy strategies and decision-making, the lack of a standardized approach to quantifying ecosystem services at the landscape scale has hindered progress in this direction. Moreover, tradeoffs between ecosystem services and the supply/demand ratio of ecosystem services in urban landscapes have rarely been investigated. In our paper, we present a method to quantify and map the supply and demand of three essential provisioning services – energy, food, and water – along the rural–urban gradient of the eastern German region Leipzig–Halle. This urban region has experienced significant socio-economic dynamics and land use changes since the German reunification in 1990. The results show that both the demand and the supply of ecosystem services changed considerably during the time span under consideration (1990–2007). We identified an increasing supply/demand ratio of food and water but a decreasing supply/demand ratio of energy. In addition, the pattern of ecosystem demands shows a levelling of rural–urban gradients, reflecting profound modifications of traditional rural–urban relationships. The changes of ecosystem service supply gradients are determined more by land use intensity, such as the intensification of agricultural production, than by land cover changes such as urban sprawl. The comparison of supply/demand ratios and rural–urban patterns of ecosystem services can help decision-makers in landscape management in striving for a sustainable balance between resource supply and demand.