Coupling PLUS–InVEST Model for Ecosystem Service Research in Yunnan Province, China

In efforts to improve regional ecosystem service functions, coordinate land development and ecological conservation, and establish a reference for optimizing land resource allocation and policy formulation to cope with climate change, it is critical to investigate the spatial distribution of land use/cover change (LUCC) and ecosystem services (ESs) under future climate change. This study proposes a framework based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway and Representative Concentration Pathway (SSP-RCP), integrating the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model and the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and tradeoffs (InVEST) model to analyze the spatial agglomeration of ESs, to analyze the importance of each driving factors. The results of the study show as follows: (1) the combination of CMIP6 and PLUS models can effectively simulate land use with an overall accuracy of 0.9379. (2) In spatial correlation, ESs show good clustering in all three future scenarios, with similar distribution of cold hotspots in the SSP126 and SSP245 scenarios. Hotspots are more dispersed and cold spots are shifted to the west in the SSP585 scenario. (3) GDP is an important factor in carbon storage and habitat quality, and precipitation has a greater impact on soil retention and water production. Overall, ESs can be increased by appropriately controlling population and economic development, balancing economic development and ecological protection, promoting energy transition, maintaining ecological hotspot areas, and improving cold spot areas.