Determining the driving mechanism of ecosystem services provided by cropland in China

Cropland provides the base for the rising food demand. Recent studies highlighted the more systematic cropland management from ecosystem services (ESs) perspective, rather than solely depending on the provisioning services. However, the driving mechanism of cropland related ESs has not been well understood, hindering the co-benefits of sustainable crop-management practices. Taking the world’s largest grain producer, China, as a study case, this work contributed to determine the dynamic changes and driving mechanism of cropland related ESs by integrating InVEST model, geographically weighted regression and partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). It was found that, from 2000 to 2020, the increased water purification (WP) was along with the decreased grain production (GP), soil retention (SR), carbon storage (CS) and water retention (WR) which mainly occurred in southern China. Aggregation of ESs were identified with strong spatial heterogeneity, while CS-WR and WR-WP almost showed persistent trade-offs. The direct effects of climate on WR and WP, vegetation on GP, terrain on SR and human activities on CS were found to be most significant. While the opposite effects of climate on GP during the study period were also observed. The positive effect of human activities on GP and WR was lessen by the indirect effect of terrain, highlighting the synergy management of interaction mechanisms among drivers. Finally, implications of these findings were discussed.