Ecosystem services in peri-urban landscapes: The effects of agricultural landscape change on ecosystem services in Taiwan's western coastal plain

Farmland within urban peri-urban areas can be understood as part of a green infrastructure that provides agro-ecosystem services to benefit the urban population. The growing influence of cities on peri-urban agricultural lands has had significant effects on agricultural land transformation with an associated loss in agro-ecosystem services. The loss of ecosystem services could result in an increase in a city's vulnerability to climate change. More than one sixth of the agricultural lands in Taiwan's western plain have been converted to other uses from 1970 to 2006. We hypothesize that planning guidelines based on landscape ecology could help to plan the optimal spatial configuration of paddy rice land uses in peri-urban areas. In order to study the effects of agricultural landscape changes on ecosystem services in peri-urban areas, this study selected appropriate landscape metrics to assess ecosystem services with landscape composition and configuration metrics for each of the research sites. This research has shown that because agro-ecosystem services are related with the spatial configuration of paddy rice fields, by planning agricultural land use change to optimize spatial configuration, agro-ecosystem services can be maintained. Guidelines are offered to manage agroecosystem services within a context of land use change.