A two‐step spatially explicit optimization approach of integrating ecosystem services (ES) into land use planning (LUP) to generate the optimally sustainable schemes

Abstract Xuzhou, as an industrial centre and typical resource‐based city in China, is facing serious pressure on development transformation. The embedding of ecosystem services (ES) into land use planning (LUP) is of great significance to realize the coupling of ecology and society. This paper proposed a two‐step spatially explicit optimization approach of integrating ES into LUP, with consideration of macro‐requirements, spatial heterogeneity, and the spatially explicit basis. The first step was to construct a linear optimization model to obtain the land quantity structure corresponding to the maximized ES value. The second step was to spatially allocate land use structure to maximize the suitability of spatial units providing ES. The results showed that the land use structure corresponding to the maximization ES value of Xuzhou was obtained to satisfy the welfare of habitant and to create the ecological competitiveness. The optimal spatial layout of Xuzhou with maximum spatial suitability of providing ES was acquired through spatial optimization of this approach. ES was matched to the units with the high spatial suitability, and the spatial potential of ES was released. The conflicts among supporting services, provisioning services, regulating services, and cultural services were well managed with the equipment of multi‐objective trade‐off technology. The proposed ES embedding approach has good performance in the optimal allocation of land resources for ES maximization and in managing trade‐offs during multi‐objectives programming. Therefore, it is expected to be widely used for ES‐oriented LUP formulation.