Abstract
Optimizing spatial patterns of land development and minimizing the ecological impact of concentrated construction is the key to realizing regionally sustainable development. The reasonable assessment of the ecological effects of the Winter Olympic construction on areas where the mountainous ecosystem is ecologically sensitive and vulnerable is urgent for responsible urban and regional development. Here, we assess the multi-scale suitability of ecologically compatible development in Winter Olympic regions using the ecological suitability assessment method based on GIS spatial analysis. We found the Chongli District had relatively high ecological structure and function resistances at a basin scale and that the towns where Olympic facilities located also had larger ecological resistance. The integrated suitability assessment showed the prior and moderate zones for suitable large-scale development and utilization in Chongli were smaller than those in other counties. The total loss area of natural ecological systems (forests, shrubs and meadows) for a new ski resort is 117.27 hm2, which will lead to ecosystem function loss such as water and soil conservation and will potentially impact ecological systems. This research will be a useful reference for exploring the multi-scale balancing of conservation and development for Winter Olympic regions, and in turn, for concentrated global constructions.
Highlights
The relationship between regional development and ecosystem conservation has been the subject of decades of intensive research[1,2,3], especially in some national strategic planning construction areas[4], e.g., Olympic construction[5,6]
Spatial distribution of ecological structure resistance (Fig. 1a) determined by topography, geological environment, and ecological protection zones shows that the Yanghe watershed areas are generally at lower levels, with the first and second category together accounting for 66.79%, and indicating most areas are suitable for land development from an ecological structure perspective
Chongli District, as the focus construction area for the Winter Olympic venue, has a relatively high ecological structure resistance, where 43.93% of the area belongs to the higher grade and only 9.16% of the area belongs to the lowest category (Table S1)
Summary
The relationship between regional development and ecosystem conservation has been the subject of decades of intensive research[1,2,3], especially in some national strategic planning construction areas[4], e.g., Olympic construction[5,6]. The basic principles of existing studies are similar to those utilized in this study: optimizing the adaptive hierarchy through remote sensing and GIS spatial analysis techniques[20,21,27,28] This approach has been extensively applied in the assessment of different kinds of land use types, such as agricultural land[29], land habitats for animal and plant species[30], landscape evaluation and planning[31], ecosystem services sustainability[32,33], and environmental impact assessments[34]. The ecological suitability theories have been expanded by studies examining landscape ecological security patterns and ecosystem services[36,37] and dynamic ecological processing frameworks[10,38] Most of these ecological constraints add ecological factors to the model[10] rather than investigate the relative supporting roles, essentially neglecting the effects of simulation in different scales and the evaluation of ecological loss of construction through ecological field survey. To reduce the negative impacts of human activities, to decrease ecological risks, and to add to the quality and fun of the Games in construction areas, this paper examines the spatial dynamic characteristics of a natural ecosystem’s self-organization and capacity to self-update, reflected in terms of the three aspects of ecological elements, ecological importance, and ecological resilience by using the integrated ecological resistance (IER) conceptual model based on ecological circulation theory
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