Assessing and Simulating the Impact of Land-Use Transition on Ecosystem Service Value in the Pearl River–Xijiang Economic Belt, China

The Pearl River–Xijiang Economic Belt, a vital economic zone and ecological barrier in southwestern China, has witnessed significant land-use transitions since the new millennium. Scientific assessment and simulation of the ecological effects of land-use transitions in this region can provide essential support for coordinated regional development and green transformation in areas with similar ecological and economic functions. Based on land-use datasets from 2000, 2010, and 2020, this study adopted the equivalent value coefficient method to quantify the spatiotemporal evolution of ecosystem service value (ESV) across the Economic Belt. The GeoSOS-FLUS model was further used to simulate land-use changes and their corresponding ESV effects under multiple scenarios for the year 2030. The results showed that from 2000 to 2020, construction land expanded dramatically while cultivated land shrank sharply. The main land-use conversions involved reciprocal transitions between cultivated land and forest and large-scale conversion of water bodies and cultivated land into construction land. The total regional ESV exhibited a continuous declining trend over this study period, with a more pronounced decline in the Pearl River section than in the Xijiang section. Spatially, ESV exhibited a differentiation pattern of high values in the Xijiang section and low values in the Pearl River section. Multi-scenario simulations for 2030 indicate that the ecological protection scenario achieves the most notable ESV improvement, outperforming the natural development, economic development, cultivated land protection, and comprehensive development scenarios by 2.72%, 2.88%, 3.30%, and 0.87%, respectively. Based on these findings, this study proposes targeted policy implications for land development and utilization in the Pearl River–Xijiang Economic Belt and analogous regions, providing references for evidence-based land-use decision-making.