How does the temporal relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing change in space and time? Evidence from Inner Mongolian drylands

Studies of the ecosystem services (ES) and human wellbeing (HWB) relationship have proliferated in recent decades, but few have examined how ES affect HWB over time in a region (i.e., the temporal ES-HWB relationship) and how this relationship varies between regions. Thus, this study was intended to address these questions using data from Inner Mongolia. We first quantified multiple indicators of ES and objective HWB from 1978 to 2019, and then quantified their temporal relationship with correlation analysis over the entire duration and during four development periods, respectively. Our results showed that, depending on the time periods of analysis, geographic locations, and indicators, the temporal ES-HWB relationship varied substantially in both correlation strength and directionality (r values ranged from −0.93 to +1). Specifically, food-related provisioning services and cultural services often showed significant positive relationships with income, consumption, and basic living needs (r values ranged from +0.43 to +1), but erratic relationships with equity, employment, and social relationships (r values ranged from −0.93 to +0.96). Also, the positive correlations between food-related provisioning services and HWB were generally weaker in the urbanized regions. Cultural services and HWB were more strongly correlated in later development periods, whereas the relationship between regulating services and HWB was quite variable in space and time. The variations in the relationship over different development periods may be attributable to changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions, while the variations between regions were likely due to spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors. Our findings have an important policy implication for Inner Mongolia and beyond: sustainable management based on the ES and HWB relationship must be temporally adaptive and spatially tailored.