The impact of sloping land conversion program on ecosystem services interaction in forest-tea landscape

Background: The interaction of ecosystem services (ESs) has attracted great attention as land use changes at the landscape scale to synergize ecological and economic benefits, while the influence of landscape structure on the interaction of ESs has received less investigation. Methods: We proposed an integrated framework to analyze the influence of the sloping land conversion program (SLCP) on the interaction of ESs and provided a case study of a forest-tea landscape in Gande town, Anxi County, located on the southeastern coast of China. Visualizing the land use change under the implementation of the SLCP on the map, quantitatively measuring metrics of landscape structure, and comparing ES provisioning indicate ES interactions. Results: The results show that ecological and economic benefits are synergistic in Gande under the implementation of the SLCP, as more forestland and farmland was converted from tea gardens. Moreover, the forest-tea-agricultural product landscape structure promotes sustainable landscape management. Conclusion: It makes sense that landscape structure changes the influence of land use policies under the different social economic and economic contexts, and ES interactions are dynamic with different landscape structures.