Through the implementation of ecological compensation policy, it is of great significance to protect ecosystems, coordinate regional development, and achieve sustainable development goals. This study selected the carbon sequestration service in Yantai as an example and carried out a study on the measurement of ecological compensation based on the ecosystem services supply and demand. Moreover, this study clarified the whole process of the generation, circulation and social demand docking of ecological benefits from the perspective of “nature-society”, proposed a spatial flow characterization method for carbon sequestration services, and described the “externality” spillover of ecosystem services. The results showed that most areas of Yantai belonged to the ecological surplus area, which were important sources of carbon sequestration services. Ecological compensation was needed, with a total amount of about 2.2 billion yuan. Qixia, Muping and Penglai had greater comparative ecological radiation force (CERF), and the total amount of carbon sequestration services transferred to the external areas was large. Although the carbon sequestration flows of Yantai showed a spatial decay law, there were significant differences in the direction of different districts and cities. The study can provide a reference for achieving sustainable development of Yantai and formulating ecological compensation policy.

The equitable distribution of public health facilities is a major concern of urban planners. Previous studies have explored the balance and fairness of various medical resource distributions using the accessibility of in-demand public medical service facilities while ignoring the differences in the supply of public medical service facilities. First aid data with location information and patient preference information can reflect the ability of each hospital and the health inequities in cities. Determining which factors affect the measured differences in public medical service facilities and how to alter these factors will help researchers formulate targeted policies to solve the current resource-balance situation of the Ministry of Public Health. In this study, we propose a method to measure the differences in influence among hospitals based on actual medical behavior and use geographically weighted regression (GWR) to analyze the spatial correlations among the location, medical equipment, medical ability, and influencing factors of each hospital. The results show that Wuhan presents obvious health inequality, with the high-grade hospitals having spatial agglomeration in the city-center area, while the number and quality of hospitals in the peripheral areas are lower than those in the central area; thus, the hospitals in these peripheral areas need to be further improved. The method used in this study can measure differences in the influence of public medical service facilities, and the results are consistent with the measured differences at hospital level. Hospital influence is not only related to the equipment and medical ability of each hospital but is also affected by location factors. This method illustrates the necessity of conducting more empirical research on the public medical service supply to provide a scientific basis for formulating targeted policies from a new perspective.

Rapid urbanization aggravates the degradation of wetland function. However, few studies have quantitatively analyzed and predicted the comprehensive impacts of different scenarios and types of human activities on wetland ecosystems from the perspective of land development. Combined with the Habitat Risk Assessment (HRA) model and the Cellular Automata (Ca)-Markov model, this study quantitatively measured the impact intensity and spatial distribution of different types of human activities on the wetland ecosystem in 2015, simulated and predicted the ecological pressure on the wetland in 2030, and identified the ecological risk hotspots of the Yangtze River waterfront along the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The results showed that the ecological risk of wetlands in the study area was low in the urban core and high in the suburbs. Construction activities posed a greater risk to wetlands. The intensity of human activities in the ecological protection scenario will be significantly lower than that in the natural development scenario in 2030. The waterfront in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River will face more ecological risks. The results of the study can provide theoretical and technical support for wetland conservation policy formulation and waterfront development in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Ecological infrastructure plays a crucial role in strengthening the relationship between humans and the environment by optimizing ecological space and resource allocation in urban environments. However, there are few studies on the functional assessment and spatial and temporal evolution of ecological infrastructure and its layout optimization. In this study, we developed an ecological infrastructure optimization method based on ecosystem service supply, demand, and flow in Yantai City as the study area; identified the spatial extent of urban ecological infrastructure and its spatial and temporal changes based on the spatial quantification of multiple ecosystem services; assessed whether the existing ecological infrastructure could satisfy the needs of the urban residents by calculating the ecosystem service supply and demand indexes; and used the spatial quantification of ecosystem service flows to optimize the spatial layout of urban ecological infrastructure. This study shows that, from 2010 to 2018, ecological infrastructure in Longkou, Zhaoyuan, and Laiyang decreased, contrasting with the growth in the existing peripheral areas. The study found a clear spatial mismatch between the supply and demand of ecosystem services, especially in the central urban areas, suggesting that the existing infrastructure was unable to satisfy the needs of high-demand areas. This study assessed the peripheral areas of the city using comparative ecological radiation force (CERF), including 314.64 km² of environmentally beautiful village units as key components of ecological infrastructure in Yantai City. These findings are crucial for sustainable environmental management and urban development strategies.

Ecosystem services are characterized by region and scale, and contribute to human welfare. Taking Yantai city, a typical bay city in China, as the example, its three representative ecosystem services: food supply (FS), carbon sequestration (CS) and water yield (WY) were chosen as study targets. Based on analyzation of six different aspects of the supply and variation characteristic of demand, this study tried to propose advices for comprehensive improvement of ecosystem services for spatial optimization. The results showed that: (1) ecosystem services supply was strong in central and southern areas of Yantai, while the northern coastal areas were relatively weak; (2) synergistic relationships were found of FS-CS, FS-WY and CS-WY both in 2009 and 2015, with the strongest one for FS-WY. Additionally, in the synergistic relationships, each pair of ecosystem services was dominated by one ecosystem service; (3) most of the three pairs of synergistic relationships had the tendency to strengthen with larger scales; (4) four ecosystem demands changing areas were observed and comprehensive improvement suggestions for them were proposed. This work provides a new attempt to improve ecosystem services based on its supply-demand relationship, which will give a baseline reference for related studies in Yantai city, as well as other similar bay cities.

Rapid urbanization caused a massive loss of natural habitats and seriously changed urban natural ecosystems. Ecological network, a spatial concept of ecosystems, maps the most valuable areas that provide multiple ecological goods and services for human demands. Ecological network has long been adopted worldwide for improving urban ecological environment under the scenarios of rapid urbanization. However, Little researches focused on changes in ecological networks and their effects on urban ecosystem. It is important to investigate the trends in ecological network changes, clear its relationship with human activities and policies for guiding sustainable economic and social development. The study aimed to analyze the relationship between the changes in ecological networks and human activities, regional policies as well as environmental changes, and to establish new ecological networks that meet the human demands of ecosystem services, in China’s three typical urban agglomerations, including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD), and Pearl River Delta (PRD) from 2000 to 2015.This study used the variation of habitat quality index, ecosystem carbon stock, PM2.5 and supply-demand of ecosystem services to measure the eco-environmental effects of ecological network changes under complex physical and socio-economic circumstances. Meanwhile, it established the new ecological networks based on the human-being demand of ecosystem services calculated by real-time population distribution, accessibility, and land development index, trying to optimize the land spatial patterns and ecosystem management in urban agglomerations. The results showed that a lot of areas of ecological networks had vanished into dryland, urban land and other developed land from 2000 to 2015, resulting from urban expansion, industrial development and regional land policies. The degradation in ecological networks caused a significant increase of PM2.5 and decrease of habitat quality index and ecosystem carbon stock. And the spatial imbalance in the supply-demand of ecosystem services was shrinking to varying degrees, due to different regional ecological protection policies. There were regional spatial differences in the establishment of new ecological networks. However, the closer to central cities of each agglomerations, the human demands of ecosystem services and the need of strengthening the preservation ecosystems were more critical. This study contributes to the identifying the role of human activities on ecological processes and provides a scientific reference for the use of ecological network as the basis of the regional development plans. It is necessary to relieve the dilemma between the urban growth and ecosystem protection.