Application of ecosystem health cost-effect analysis in eco-planning in Guangzhou City, China

Ecosystem health has been a focal point and research frontier of applied ecology in recent years, increasingly used in urban ecological studies. To quantify the effect of ecological improvement from eco-planning, an ecosystem health assessment method is used in eco-planning evaluation and decision support in the urban eco-planning research of Guangzhou City of China. Based on features of an urban ecosystem, five factors such as vigor, organizational structure, resilience, ability to maintain ecosystem service, and influence on people’s health were selected to develop the assessment indicator system. Then, to evaluate the validity of planning measures, a cost-effect analysis of the different scenarios on eco-planning was made, taking investment of the planned projects as the cost and ecosystem health state after implementing the scenarios as the effect. To establish priority of all the proposed planning schemes or countermeasures, variation of the ecosystem health state was evaluated when the investment of eco-environmental construction projects changes by ±10%, ±20% and ±50%, respectively. Thus, the order of importance of eco-environment construction projects to the urban ecosystem health state can be worked out, providing a reference for prioritizing the implementation of such urban eco-environmental projects. The study proved the trial value of an ecosystem health evaluation method in urban eco-planning research.