Researchers propose new method to enhance ecosystem services

by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
October 9, 2025

Global change is profoundly impacting ecosystem functions and service provision. Previous studies have found that climate change and land use change have asymmetric interactions on water yield in China’s river basin ecosystems.

Recently, a team led by Cai Qinghua, a researcher at the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed a new method to manage the connection between human systems and natural systems to enhance ecosystem services.

This framework provides support at the scientific, management, and policy levels, aiming to strengthen ecosystem service management by integrating human and natural systems and their connections by examining abiotic and biotic flows across diverse landscapes. On the one hand, because landscapes provide multiple ecosystem services (such as water resources), their inherent dynamics and characteristics encompass extensive transfers between supply and demand areas, known as ecosystem service flows. On the other hand, non-ecosystem service flows (i.e., those not between supply and demand areas, such as species dispersal between natural ecosystems) can influence the dynamics of ecosystem service flows across landscapes.

Keep reading (in Chinese): https://www.cas.cn/syky/202510/t20251009_5084687.shtml

Read the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fee.70002