Abstract
Landscape ecological risk assessment can effectively identify key elements for landscape sustainability, which directly improves human wellbeing. However, previous research has tended to apply risk probability, measured by overlaying landscape metrics to evaluate risk, generally lacking a quantitative assessment of loss and uncertainty of risk. This study, taking Liaoyuan City as a case area, explores landscape ecological risk assessment associated with mining cities, based on probability of risk and potential ecological loss. The assessment results show landscape ecological risk is lower in highly urbanized areas than those rural areas, suggesting that not only cities but also natural and semi-natural areas contribute to overall landscape-scale ecological risk. Our comparison of potential ecological risk in 58 watersheds in the region shows that ecological loss are moderate or high in the 10 high-risk watersheds. The 35 moderate-risk watersheds contain a large proportion of farmland, and the 13 low-risk watersheds are mainly distributed in flat terrain areas. Our uncertainty analyses result in a close range between simulated and calculated values, suggesting that our model is generally applicable. Our analysis has good potential in the fields of resource development, landscape planning and ecological restoration, and provides a quantitative method for achieving landscape sustainability in a mining city.
Highlights
Landscape sustainability is defined as the capacity of a landscape to consistently provide long-term, landscape-specific ecosystem services, which is essential for maintaining and improving human wellbeing [1]
The goals of this study were to (1) quantify the disturbance and vulnerability degrees of the landscape using multiple indicators developed on the basis of traditional landscape pattern indices for mining cities; (2) calculate the risk of loss based on the landscape pattern index, in order to explore a new model for the landscape ecological risk assessment of mining cities; (3) construct landscape ecological risk zoning based on risk assessment results to provide direction for the sustainable development of mining cities; and (4) conduct landscape ecological risk uncertainty analysis to verify the reliability of our risk evaluation results
Landscape ecological risk assessment is useful in representing landscape ecological security, which is a critical domain of landscape sustainability [50,51,52]
Summary
Landscape sustainability is defined as the capacity of a landscape to consistently provide long-term, landscape-specific ecosystem services, which is essential for maintaining and improving human wellbeing [1]. Sustainability is an object that meets the demands of humans nowadays, and ensures future benefits. The forecast for future benefit and security is critical in sustainability research. Risk assessment, which focuses on future damages, is appropriate for evaluating sustainability as both of the concepts concern the future benefits and security of system. Ecological security framework for ecosystem health protection and ecological risk control are essential for the improvement of ecological sustainability in regions and landscapes [2]. Ecological risk assessment is one effective way to determine regional and landscape-scale ecological sustainability [3].
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