A BFU research team led by Professor Chi Li has made new progress in studying ecosystem service supply-demand relationships and their optimization in the Lower Yellow River urban agglomeration. The findings were published in the international journals Journal of Cleaner Production and Sustainable Cities and Society. Using the Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration (SPUA) as the study area, the team conducted a series of studies on ecosystem service supply-demand relationships and their optimization. 

The studies show that from 2000 to 2020, the region experienced an overall decline in ecosystem service surpluses and increasing spatial mismatches, while significant synergies and trade-offs were observed among different ecosystem services.Further analysis showed that both sufficiency and equity exhibited significant positive spatial autocorrelation and scale heterogeneity. Based on these findings, the researchers proposed related strategies tailored to different regions and spatial scales. 

Taken together, the two studies represent a clear progression. The study area expanded from eight core cities to the entire Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration, while the research perspective developed from matching the supply and demand to multi-objective assessments of sufficiency and equity. The research also extended from identifying spatiotemporal patterns and driving mechanisms to examining ecosystem service flows and regional collaborative governance, providing a research basis for a deeper understanding of ecosystem service supply and demand relationships in urban agglomerations and for exploring the differentiated approaches to ecological governance. 

Xu Yifei, a Ph.D. student at the School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University, is the first author of the papers, and Professor Li Chi is the corresponding author. Beijing Forestry University is the first affiliated institution. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51978050). 

Paper link:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2025.145523

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2025.107070 

Written by  Xu Yifei
Translated by Chen Ruirui
Edited by Song He
Reviewed by Yu Yangyang