energies Article Responses of Ecosystem Service to Land Use Change in Qinghai Province Ze Han 1,2, Wei Song 1,* and Xiangzheng Deng 1,3 1 Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;
[email protected] (Z.H.);
[email protected] (X.D.) 2 College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Chongqing Jiaotong University, Chongqing 400041, China 3 Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-10-6488-9450; Fax: +86-10-6485-6533 Academic Editor: Jinwei Dong Received: 27 December 2015; Accepted: 12 April 2016; Published: 21 April 2016 Abstract: Qinghai Province has a very fragile ecological environment and is an important component of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. To understand the disturbance caused by human activities to the local ecological system, it is necessary to evaluate the response of ecological service functions to land use change in Qinghai Province and to uncover the sensitivity of ecological service functions to land use change. This study uses a proxy-based method and proposes a sensitivity index to describe the degree of ecological service function response to the land use change in Qinghai Province. The findings were as follows. (1) From 1988 to 2008, the area of cultivated land, construction land and water in Qinghai Province increased, and forest land and grassland continuously decreased. The agricultural economy and the development of urbanization are the main driving factors in land use change in this area.