Urbanization and its impacts on ecosystem services and human well-beings in rapidly urbanizing watersheds

Urbanizing watersheds face challenges from both human and nature systems. Our research group focuses on urbanization and its impacts on human-nature systems at the watershed scale. First, we measured the built-up area expansion across global watersheds. Then, we investigated the supply and demand of ecosystem services (e.g., soil conservation, water provision and cultural services) based on the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model, Solves model and online big data, in Guanting Reservoir Basin, a transitional ecosystem from semi-arid areas to arid areas. Then, we examined how urbanization affect the ecosystem services received and realized by local urban and rural residents of this Basin, in the context of Ecological Civilizaton, and Poverty Alleviation Relocation (PAR) Initiative in China. Our results exhibted unique characteristics of ecosystem services and human well-beings in rapidly urbanizing watersheds and can provide policy implications for similar basins