| Summary: | Intensive human activity has led to dramatic land changes in coastal watersheds, which in turn cause landscape pattern changes and threaten the valuable but fragile ecosystem. This paper conducted an empirical study in Jiulong River watershed (JRW) - a coastal watershed of southeast China with a population of more than 5 million and a land area of approximately 14,700 km2, to understand the effects of land-use change on landscape pattern and ecosystem services. We characterizes and compares land-use change with the approach of Intensity Analysis, the landscape change with landscape metrics, and ecosystem services values (ESVs) change in monetary terms, between the estuary and non-estuary zones of JRW, from 1990 to 2015. The results show that the overall land-use change in the estuary zone is continuously increasing while it went down after 2000 in the non-estuary zone. The land-use change intensity is positively associated with overall landscape fragmentation and heterogeneity in the estuary zone. The built-up area has become more aggregated, while grassland, cropland and woodland have become less aggregated, which is negatively associated with the ESVs in both zones. Furthermore, the land-use change intensity was found to strongly correlate with the degradation of ESVs.
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