Chinese marine ecosystem services value: Regional and structural equilibrium analysis

The Ocean regulates the Earth's environment, with the value of marine ecosystem services being embodied by how humans benefit from marine ecological resources. Here, we combine past research and statistics to calculate the value of marine ecosystem services. Within this framework, we aimed to obtain a dynamic measurement of these values with minimal subjectivity. Specifically, we measured the value of marine ecosystem services for 11 coastal provinces and cities in China. Due to differences in the establishment and speed of development in the value of marine ecosystem services at different locations, we performed regional and structural equilibrium analyses on the value of marine ecosystem services using an improved Gini coefficient. Overall, the regional equilibrium had improved over time, with the rate of contribution rate and shared weights of the Northern region increasing significantly. With respect to structure, the overall Gini coefficient decreased, due to an improvement in a sub-section of the marine ecosystem service value equilibrium. We could improve the equilibrium based on to the marginal effect of the Gini coefficient. The concept that ecosystem service values may be calculated based on data rather than opinion, along with breaking ecosystem services into components, facilitated the detailed analysis achieved by this study, and could be applied to other regions globally. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.