Values of the Farmland Ecosystem Services of Qingdao City, China, and their Changes

The values of farmland ecosystem services are composed of several components: provisioning service value, regulating service value, supporting service value and cultural service value, so it is important to make a full assessment of the values of farmland ecosystem services for agriculture and farmland protection. Here, we assessed the values of farmland ecosystem services in Qingdao City in 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017 by using various methods (market value method, carbon tax method, afforestation cost method, substitute cost method, equivalent factor method, etc.) based on establishing an assessment index system for the farmland ecosystem services value. The results show that the total yearly value of farmland ecosystem services increased from 499.74×108 Yuan to 681.74×108 Yuan in the period of 1997–2017, and the yearly value of farmland ecosystem services per hectare increased from 6.57×104 Yuan to 9.73×104 Yuan. The product provisioning service, carbon fixation service and oxygen release service, as well as the soil conservation service, are the main farmland ecosystem services, and the proportions of these four ecosystem service values to the total value of farmland ecosystem services in Qingdao City were large and kept increasing. Some countermeasures are put forward to adequately use the indirect service value of the farmland ecosystem and provide improved well-being for humans, such as protecting and wisely using farmland, developing agriculture that is rooted in local conditions, promoting agricultural production efficiency, speeding up construction of modern agriculture gardens, deepening the supply-side structural reform of agriculture, developing agricultural eco-tourism, etc.