Assessment of Urban Ecosystem Health Based on Entropy Weight Extension Decision Model in Urban Agglomeration

Qian Yang,Aiwen Lin,Zhenzhen Zhao,Cheng Sun,Ling Zou

doi:10.3390/su8090869

Abstract

Urban ecosystem health evaluation can assist in sustainable ecological management at a regional level. This study examined urban agglomeration ecosystem health in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River with entropy weight and extension theories. The model overcomes information omissions and subjectivity problems in the evaluation process of urban ecosystem health. Results showed that human capital and education, economic development level as well as urban infrastructure have a significant effect on the health states of urban agglomerations. The health status of the urban agglomeration’s ecosystem was not optimistic in 2013. The majority of the cities were unhealthy or verging on unhealthy, accounting for 64.52% of the total number of cities in the urban agglomeration. The regional differences of the 31 cities’ ecosystem health are significant. The cause originated from an imbalance in economic development and the policy guidance of city development. It is necessary to speed up the integration process to promote coordinated regional development. The present study will aid us in understanding and advancing the health situation of the urban ecosystem in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and will provide an efficient urban ecosystem health evaluation method that can be used in other areas.

Highlights

Urban agglomeration (UA), which plays an important role in integrating regional coordinated development, building competitive industry clusters, and promoting industrial transfers between different areas, has gradually become the principal geographic unit for countries to participate in global competition and China’s international division of labor [1,2]
Matter–element extension put forward a new research field to solve contradictory problems by the formalization method, which was proposed by Cai in the 1990s [44]
The extension theory-based methodology was proposed for the evaluation of urban ecosystem health; it circumvents the incompatibility of individual indicators in the evaluation process and avoids the uncertainty of the index weight, thereby generating precise and reasonable the evaluation results

Summary

Introduction

Urban agglomeration (UA), which plays an important role in integrating regional coordinated development, building competitive industry clusters, and promoting industrial transfers between different areas, has gradually become the principal geographic unit for countries to participate in global competition and China’s international division of labor [1,2]. A considerable amount of factors and its related complex interactions bring a deep impact on ecosystem health and human health with the growth of economy, population, industrialization and urbanization [5]. Sustained and intensive human activities in the UA have caused serious problems, such as water shortages, air and soil pollution, a decline in biodiversity, depletion of natural resources, and the degradation of major ecosystems. These problems have placed considerable burdens upon the development quality of the UA and human life, they have hindered sustainable ecosystem development and threatened regional and national securities [6]. With awareness of eco-environmental protection enhancing, studies on the health and security of ecosystems in the UA cities have drawn more attention

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion