Assessing land-use change and landscape connectivity under multiple green infrastructure conservation scenarios

Abstract

Green infrastructure (GI) conservation is essential for maintaining ecosystem services, and has become one of the key questions in landscape ecological research, especially within urban agglomerations. However, the effectiveness of different GI conservation scenarios on land use change and landscape connectivity have rarely been explored in urban environments. Therefore, this study developed a framework that integrates GI conservation into scenario design to simulate the land use patterns and landscape connectivity of the Southern Jiangsu (SJ) urban agglomeration in 2030. Four GI conservation scenarios, which includes business as usual (BAU), source conservation (SCS), corridor conservation (CCS), and integrated source and corridor conservation (ISCCS), were constructed and compared with the year 2020 as the baseline. We found that the areas of forest, grassland and water body were decreased remarkably under the BAU. The SCS mainly mitigated the reduction of forest area, while the CCS mostly contributed to the conservation of water body and grassland. The ISCCS resulted in a slight decrease of forest area but increases in water body and grassland. Moreover, the ISCCS had the best performance in the improvement of landscape connectivity, followed by the CCS and the SCS. Our analysis reveals that the multiple GI conservation scenarios effectively protected the area and landscape connectivity of natural spaces, with different extent of contribution and beneficial objectives. Our study can help urban planners understand how natural spaces will be disturbed over time and provide a reference for natural resources regulation and ecological conservation actions.