Integrating long-term dynamics of ecosystem services into restoration and management of large shallow lakes

Adequately understanding the dynamics of ecosystem services (ES), a practical framework for analyzing social-ecological systems (SES), is crucial for sustainable environmental management and decision-making. However, the interactions among multiple ES at multi-decadal scales are less explored, and many challenges remain to integrate long-term dynamics of ES into ecological restoration and management. Here, we combined socioeconomic data with synthesized paleolimnological records to assess the dynamics of 12 critical ES and regional SES in the Taihu Lake Basin (China) over the past century. Our results indicated that multiple provisioning services showed upwards trends while major regulating services in terms of water, sediment, soil and air regulation had sustained downwards trends since the 1950s, and reached dangerous status after the 1980s. This dynamic trade-off was mainly attributed to the effects of continued socioeconomic transitions including agriculture intensification, industrialization and urbanization. Anthropogenic land use change, pollution input, and climate changes are considered as major drivers of long-term environmental degradation. Regulating services exhibited various dynamical properties including different linear and nonlinear trends, and abrupt changes, which underlined the comprehensive consideration of legacy effects, ecological baseline, thresholds, and resilience into lake management. Environmental Kuznets curve analyses suggested that the regional SES started significant disorder from the 1970s driven by the transition between ES and non-ES (socioeconomic) supply, and then underpinned a gradual shift to reorganization stage after the 1990s. Our study highlights the significance of ES assessment from historical perspective to understand the major processes and underlying mechanisms of lake SES. With adaptive policy interventions on pollution control, efficient resource-use, and targeted environmental investment, the sustainability of regional SES can be expected.