Linking ecosystem services and ecosystem health to ecological risk assessment: A case study of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration

Scientists have paid attention to the evaluation of the risk of ecosystem service degradation under rapid urbanization; yet the performance of the existing frameworks could be improved for tackling the challenges in the evaluation. In this study, a framework combining ecosystem service with ecosystem health as an assessing endpoint of ecological risk assessment was established. The framework was applied to investigate the way in which urbanization influences the ecosystem risk of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. Firstly, the decrease ratio of ecosystem service was mainly distributed in the range from 0 to 15%; the mean value of ecosystem health decreased from 0.402 to 0.311 from 2000 to 2010. The number of assessment units exhibiting risk degree grade I (the lowest risk degree grade) decreased by 7.03%, while the number of assessment units exhibiting risk degree grade V (the highest risk degree grade) increased by 1.61% from 2000 to 2010. The ratio of artificial surface should be controlled below 70%, based on the fitting model and for the purpose of resilience management. Overall, the analytical framework can comprehensively evaluate the impacts of complex practices in land-use planning on ecosystems.