Lingxing Xu started as a PhD candidate at Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) in December 2020, working on assessing and visualizing the cross-scale social-ecological impacts of trade flows.

More information about Lingxing Xu

Professional experience

Lingxing Xu received her MSc in the major of Ecology from the Institute of Urban Environment in Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019. During her MSc, Lingxing Xu specialized in assessing and mapping ecosystem services, as well as evaluating regional and industrial eco-environment quality for sustainable management. By establishing a classification and hierarchical framework of ecosystem services accounting and zoning, she accomplished her thesis to map and analyze spatial-temporal characteristics of ecosystem services on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP), and proposed corresponding ecosystem services regionalization schemes and sustainable strategies.

After graduation, Lingxing Xu had worked as a research intern in the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences for a year and a half, focusing on ecological planning and carbon accounting.  She continued her master’s project on further exploring the trade-offs, synergies, supplies and demands of ecosystem services, and had a great interest in ecosystem service flow and regional cross-scale regulation.

In December 2020, she has joined Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) to pursue her doctoral degree with the predominate focus on the cross-scale impacts embodied in ecosystem services flows.

Research topic

In today’s globalized world, previously isolated localities are rapidly forming telecoupled connections with other regions through flows of ecosystem service. By failing to cover these cross-scale impacts, place-based ES assessments may miss important policy implications for interregional equity and sustainability.

Lingxing’s research focuses on traded goods flow, a major channel of ecosystems services flows that integrate human wellbeing and natural processes. It connects the production activities in an exporting country and the consumption activities in an importing country, with transboundary environmental, ecological and social implications. The key of her research is to systematically track the interregional trade flows and analyze the associated cross-scale socio-ecological impacts. Her research will be trying to achieve the more comprehensive understanding of the processes, impacts and sustainability transition of ecosystem services flows across a telecoupled perspective.