**1. Introduction**

With the continuous development of the world economy, the process of global urbanization is accelerating. According to the Revised World Urbanization Prospects 2018, 55% of the world's population lives in cities, and this proportion will reach 68% by 2050 [1]. From 2015 to 2030, Asia and Africa will account for 90% of the global urban population growth (equivalent to 2.5 billion people), of which China, India and Nigeria will contribute 37% [2]. Unlike countries such as North America and Brazil, which have reached at least 80% urbanization level, most countries in Africa and Asia are experiencing rapid urbanization [3]. Rapid urbanization has brought qualitative changes to the economic, administrative, cultural and social aspects of cities, but it has also increased the pressure on the ecosystem and its components, such as natural resources environment and land use change [4]. For example, Brazil entered a period of rapid urbanization development in the 1950s, and the urbanization level increased from 36% in 1950 to 65% in 1980. However, with rapid urban development, economic, social and environmental problems also appeared,

**Citation:** Cui, X.; Liu, C.; Shan, L.; Lin, J.; Zhang, J.; Jiang, Y.; Zhang, G. Spatial-Temporal Responses of Ecosystem Services to Land Use Transformation Driven by Rapid Urbanization: A Case Study of Hubei Province, China. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2022**, *19*, 178. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19010178

Academic Editor: Roberto Alonso González Lezcano

Received: 19 November 2021 Accepted: 22 December 2021 Published: 24 December 2021

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

137

such as underemployment, urban disorder development and environmental pollution [5,6]. China has experienced the largest and fastest urbanization process. According to the data of China Bureau of statistics, the urbanization level has risen from 17.90% in 1978 to 63.89% in 2020. In this process, although the acceleration of urbanization promotes social and economic development [7], it also leads to irreversible changes in land use [7,8], mainly because the significant increase in urban land leads to a large amount of occupation of natural land such as cropland, wetland and grassland [9]. In recent decades, the pattern of land use/land cover in Mainland China has undergone significant changes [10], and urbanization is one of the most important reasons for this change.

Land use changes reflect the most direct interaction between human activities and ecosystems [11,12], and are therefore regarded as the main driving factor of ecological processes and ecosystem services [13]. Abundant research has confirmed a certain connection between land use/land cover change and ecosystem services [14,15]. For example, the replacement of forest and pasture land by cultivated land affects the soil regulation function of the ecosystem [16]. Land use change affects the food production function of the ecosystem [17–19]. The expansion of industrial and residential land has affected the water supply function of the ecosystem [20–22], resulting in water resource shortages [23]. Land use/land cover change can change the surface−atmosphere interaction in energy exchanged and have an additional effect on temperature, thus affecting the climate regulation function of ecosystem [24,25]. It also affects regional biodiversity at multiple scales and lead to changes in landscape structure [26–28]. These studies have proved that land use change causes changes in the structure and function of the ecosystem, thus changing the provision of ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services refer to the benefits obtained from ecosystems that directly or indirectly support human survival and development, including provisioning, regulation, supporting and cultural services, which are related to human life, health and well−being [29–31]. Since ecosystem services are crucial to maintaining the quality of human life, many scholars have devoted themselves to estimating and evaluating the value of ecosystem services. There are many methods to evaluate the value of ecosystem services, including monetary model, investment model [32,33], shadow engineering [34], matrix method [35], etc. Among them, the currency model evaluates the value of ecosystem services in monetary units from the perspective of economic benefits [36]. In 1997, based on the equilibrium value theory and effect to value theory, Costanza formulated the equivalent factor table of global ecosystem service value, determined the first global coefficient of ESV, and measured the ESV change caused by land use change in the perspective of monetary units [29]. On the basis of Costanza's results and a questionnaire of 500 Chinese ecologists, Chinese scholar Xie Gaodi determined the ESV equivalent factors suitable for China's terrestrial ecosystem, and based on China's national conditions through the biomass parameter tree equivalent factor table for multiple revisions to formulate "Chinese terrestrial ecosystem service value equivalent factor table" [37–39]. At present, measuring the impact of land use/cover change on the value of ecosystem services has become an important field of sustainable development science [40]. In recent years, many scholars have carried out extensive research on this in various regions, such as the world [41,42], Africa [43] OECD countries [44], Latin America and the Caribbean [45], China [46], Nigeria [14], Nepal [47], India [48], Lake Balaton in Central Europe [49], China's Hengduan Mountains [50], Qinghai−Tibet Plateau [51], the Middle Yangtze River City Group [52], Ethiopian Plateau [53], Coastal areas around the Bohai Sea [54]. These are enough to show that all regions in the world pay more and more attention to ecosystems. It is widely used to measure the health status of ecosystem through the value of ecosystem services.

In recent years, there has been considerable research on land use change and ecosystem services, which can be divided into two categories: The first type is based on different models, such as CLUE−S model [55], CA−Markov model [56], etc., based on land use conditions in different scenarios to predict the impact of future land use changes on the value of ecosystem services. These scenarios generally include three scenarios: natural growth scenario, economic development scenario, and ecological protection scenario. The other is to use land use and cover data to explore the temporal and spatial changes of the ecosystem and discover the factors that lead to this change. These factors are mostly natural and man−made factors [33,57–59] and policy factors [60]. The results of many scholars on the relationship between land use change and ecosystem services have enriched the research in the ES field. However, there are few studies on the impact of rapid urbanization on land use and ecosystem services. "Urbanization−Land Use Change−Ecosystem Services Value" is a coherent response process. In the region with rapid urbanization, this research is necessary to enhance the public's understanding of ecosystem service value and provide policy support for the government. The urbanization rate of Hubei province was 31.20% in 1995 and 56.85% in 2015. With an average annual growth rate of 1.28 percentage points in the past 20 years, the urbanization rate has increased by 25.65 percentage points, which is much faster than the urbanization development rate of developed countries and regions in Europe and the United States at the same stage. The rapid development of urbanization leads to urban expansion, non−agriculturalization of cropland, increase of transportation facilities, and reduction of lakes, all of which affect land use patterns and lead to land use/land cover change. How to assess the effects of these land use changes? The response to the value of its ecosystem services is an important evaluation path. Therefore, this research attempts: (1) To investigate the changes of LULC from 1995 to 2015 as the research basis and observe the characteristics of land use transformation in Hubei. (2) To measure the changes of ESV and ecosystem services in Hubei province from 1995 to 2015. (3) To explore the spatial response mode of ecosystem services value from the perspective of county. (4) In general, to reveal the response patterns of ecosystem services value to land use transformation driven by urbanization.

#### **2. Materials and Methods**

#### *2.1. Study Area*

Hubei province is located in central China, in the central of the Yangtze River basin, north of Dongting Lake (118◦21 42"–116◦07 50" E, 29◦01 53"–33◦6 47" N) and is rich in water resources. Administratively, the province has 12 prefecture−level cities, 1 autonomous prefecture, 26 county−level cities, 35 counties and 1 forest area, covering a total area of 185,900 km2 (Figure 1). By 2020, the permanent population of Hubei had reached 59.27 million, an increase of 755,000 over 2015. Hubei province has developed industry, and equipment manufacturing industry is its important pillar industry. In recent years, it has paid attention to green environmental protection and vigorously developed tourism, low−carbon industry and the new energy industry. From the perspective of industrial structure, the proportion of tertiary industry has risen in recent years. Hubei has a variety of landforms, consisting of mountains, hills, plains and lakes. Because it is located in the transition zone of the second step to the third step of China's terrain, the terrain is high on three sides, and the middle is low and flat. Most of the region has a subtropical monsoon humid climate with an average annual temperature of 15◦~17◦and an average annual rainfall of 800~1600 mm. The superior natural geographical environment breeds and preserves rich and diverse biological communities, animal and plant resources, including many rare and endangered species and national key protected species. Among them, there are 1300 species of woody plants, many tree species, and precious and rare relict plants are preserved. Located in the Yangtze River basin, Hubei province has 206 species of fish [61]. The central and southern Jianghan Plain along the river is the economic center of Hubei province. The western and eastern parts of Hubei are mostly high mountains and large rivers. They are located around Hubei province with underdeveloped transportation and relatively backward economic development. During the study period, the urbanization rates in Hubei province increased from 31.20% to 56.85%. With the rapid development of urbanization in Hubei province, a series of ecological problems, such as the shortage of urban green space, environmental pollution, land shortage and biodiversity reduction, have emerged along with the transformation of land use [62].

**Figure 1.** Location of Hubei, China. Note: Figure in top right shows the administrative area of Hubei Province. It consists of 77 administrative units, including 12 prefecture level cities, 1 Autonomous Prefecture, 26 county−level cities, 35 counties, 1 Autonomous County and 1 forest area.
