Construction and optimization of ecological security pattern based on the coupling of ecological-production-living spaces: taking Yangzhou City as an example

佛山市高明区生态安全格局和建设用地扩展预案

The unprecedented regional urbanization has brought great pressure on the ecological environment. Building an ecological security pattern and guide regional land and space development is an important technique to ensure regional ecological security and stability to achieve sustainable development. In this study, the Pingtan Island of China and the Durban city of South Africa were chosen as case study area for a comparative study of different scales. The importance of ecosystem services and ecological sensitivity were evaluated, respectively. The core area of landscape which is vital for ecological function maintenance was extracted by morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and landscape connectivity analysis. Furthermore, the ecological sources were determined by combining the results of ecological protection redline delimitation and core area landscape extraction. The potential ecological corridors were identified based on the minimum cumulative resistance model, and the ecological security pattern of study areas was constructed. The results showed that the ecological protection redline areas of Pingtan and Durban were 42.78 km2 and 389.07 km2, respectively, which were mainly distributed in mountainous areas with good habitat quality. Pingtan ecological security pattern is composed of 15 ecological sources, 16 ecological corridors, 10 stepping stone patches and 15 ecological obstacle points. The total length of corridors is 112.23 km, which is radially distributed in the form of “one ring, three belts”. The ecological security pattern of Durban is composed of 15 ecological sources, 17 ecological corridors, 11 stepping stone patches and 18 ecological obstacle points. The total length of corridors is 274.25 km, which is radially distributed in the form of “two rings and three belts”. The research results can provide an important reference for the land space construction planning and ecological restoration projects in Pingtan and Durban.

Rapid urbanization in China has increased the demand of land resources for urban areas and caused a series of environmental problems. Ecological security under the pressure of urban sprawl has become one typical indicator for illustrating regional environmental conditions and thus inform urban development. As an important farming area and one of the core economic development regions in northeast China, Changchun City is now confronted with severe contradictions between economic growth, habitat conservation and food security. Therefore, with the aim of developing an approach to optimize a regional ecological security pattern and land use structure, this study built a comprehensive ecological security pattern taking into account regional ecological processes including water regulation, soil and water conservation, species protection and recreation. Three patterns of ecological security were identified responding to different levels of ecological conservation: the basic security pattern, the buffer security pattern and the optimal security pattern. Based on the constraint of the ecological security pattern, the preservation area of prime farmland was added to an urban expansion suitability pattern as an additional constraint to simulate scenarios of urban expansion. The results indicate that the basic security pattern covers an area of 374.23 km2, accounting for 19.27% of the total area of Changchun City. This pattern is considered as the ecological baseline that maintains the basic ecological functions, and it is the area where ecological land cannot be occupied for construction purposes. Furthermore, co-constrained by the preservation area of prime farmland, the ecological conservation area, the ecological restriction area and the suitable development area are 190.34 km2, 384.75 km2 and 152.83 km2, respectively, accounting for 9.80%, 19.80% and 7.87% of the total area. It can be concluded that the suitable expansion area for the city is relatively limited when the conservation of farmland and regional ecological environment is considered. Therefore, positive actions such as industrial structure transformation and land use efficiency improvements should be perceived as a preferable pathway for urban development to balance economic growth, and regional ecological and food security.

ABSTRACTIn this study, the initiative of human beings to approach high‐quality ecological space is incorporated into the construction of the ecological security pattern, and an innovative method of constructing an ecological security pattern is proposed for the karst basin, where the development of mountain tourism is rapid and the incidence of sudden geodisasters is high, which can simultaneously achieve the goals of maintaining the regional ecological security and enhancing the ecological well‐being of human beings. Taking the Beipan River Basin in Guizhou Province as an example, this study incorporates human demand for high‐quality ecological space into the construction of an ecological security pattern, evaluates ecosystem service supply and demand, and connects high‐supply zones and high‐demand zones to construct a natural‐social ecological security pattern in the Beipan River Basin. Through in‐depth analysis of the spatial distribution differences of lithology and geohazards in the karst region, ecological restoration zones are delineated, and differentiated restoration measures are laid out. Finally, key ecological restoration zones at a fine scale are identified so that ecological restoration measures can be precisely implemented. The conclusions are as follows: (1) The natural ecological security pattern consists of 135 ecological sources and 343 ecological corridors. The upstream basalt area and the downstream clastic rock area are the key ecosystem service carrying areas, with several high‐quality ecological spaces, and the ecological stability is interfered with by plateau landslides, canyon avalanches, and other geohazards, (2) The socio‐ecological security pattern consists of 120 demand‐source areas and 618 supply–demand corridors, concentrated in the upstream resource‐based urban agglomerations and the midstream rocky desertification regions, with the supply–demand corridors serving as a link for human access to high‐quality ecosystem services, (3) Considering the spatial distribution of lithology, geo‐disasters, geomorphology, and ecological elements, three ecological restoration zones were divided, and differentiated restoration strategies were proposed in combination with lithology and geo‐disasters, in order to maintain the stability of the socio‐natural ecological security pattern, and (4) 135 ecological pinch points and 91 ecological obstacles are identified, which are the key areas for ecological restoration. This study can provide a reference for balancing the human‐land relationship in karst basins.

Ecological security is an overall reflection of the ecological integrity and health level of natural semi-natural ecosystems. The study obtained quantitative results of ecological land-use variety by using spatial transfer matrix, based on status maps of Anqing City in 2005 and 2017. We combined the superposition analysis of ecological sensitivity with ecological disturbance evaluation to judge the strategic nodes and corridors of core protection type, including maintenance promotion type and potential supplementary type in the study area. In addition, we introduced the model of minimum cumulative resistance to construct the ecological security pattern, superimposing with the results of ecological land use. According to the trend of change over the past decade, the study has the great significance to the ecological security pattern so that we can effectively guide to take management strategy for security landscape.

Optimisation of ecological security patterns in ecologically transition areas under the perspective of ecological resilience − a case of Taohe River

The ecological security pattern plays a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem health and ensuring ecological security. The establishment of the ecological security pattern in Mudanjiang City can provide a scientific basis and effective support for stabilizing the ecological environment, mitigating regional human–land conflicts, and rational land- use planning. This paper utilizes the theory of constructing an ecological security pattern using a source-resistance plane-corridor node to grade the importance of source areas based on the connectivity index. It combines morphological spatial pattern analysis and PLUS model to generate and identify the present value of 2022 in Mudanjiang City, as well as predict eight land types and seven landscape types under three development scenarios by 2032. A transfer matrix and transfer-intensity map are introduced to explore the structural characteristics of landscape transfer, while four fragmentation indexes are combined with principal component analysis and the coefficient of variation method to form comprehensive fragmentation indexes for different classes. Finally, based on constructing the ecological security pattern of Mudanjiang City in 2022, an analysis method is developed that establishes logical connections between land-use structure, a comprehensive fragmentation of land types, landscape transformation mechanism, and the importance of ecological sources. The results are as follows: (1) In Mudanjiang City, 23 ecological source areas, 65 corridors, and 66 ecological nodes were extracted. The overall ecological security pattern shows a “U” shape with openings to the northeast. (2) The cumulative weight of economic and social factors on the ecological resistance surface in Mudanjiang City reached 51.36%. (3) The response between the comprehensive fragmentation degree of forest land and the importance of primary and tertiary source areas was highly significant, with R values reaching 0.9675 and −0.8746, respectively. The comparative study comprehensively showed that the best scenario for the sustainable development of the ecological security pattern in the future is an ecological priority scenario, where the tertiary source area with the smallest area proportion but strongest disturbance fluctuation becomes a key area affecting connectivity and overall ecological security pattern in Mudanjiang City.

生态安全格局研究的主要内容与进展

The construction of ecological security pattern is one of the important ways to alleviate the contradiction between economic development and ecological protection, as well as the important contents of ecological civilization construction. How to scientifically construct the ecological security pattern of small-scale counties, and achieve sustainable economic development based on ecological environment protection, it has become an important proposition in regulating the ecological process effectively. Taking Fengxian County of China as an example, this paper selected the importance of ecosystem service functions and ecological sensitivity to evaluate the ecological importance and identify ecological sources. Furthermore, we constructed the ecological resistance surface by various landscape assignments and nighttime lighting modifications. Through a minimum cumulative resistance model, we obtained ecological corridors and finally constructed the ecological security pattern comprehensively combining with ecological resistance surface construction. Accordingly, we further clarified the specific control measures for ecological security barriers and regional functional zoning. This case study shows that the ecological security pattern is composed of ecological sources and corridors, where the former plays an important security role, and the latter ensures the continuity of ecological functions. In terms of the spatial layout, the ecological security barriers built based on ecological security pattern and regional zoning functions are away from the urban core development area. As for the spatial distribution, ecological sources of Fengxian County are mainly located in the central and southwestern areas, which is highly coincident with the main rivers and underground drinking water source area. Moreover, key corridors and main corridors with length of approximately 115.71 km and 26.22 km, respectively, formed ecological corridors of Fengxian County. They are concentrated in the western and southwestern regions of the county which is far away from the built-up areas with strong human disturbance. The results will provide scientific evidence for important ecological land protection and ecological space control at a small scale in underdeveloped and plain counties. In addition, it will enrich the theoretical framework and methodological system of ecological security pattern construction. To some extent, it also makes a reference for improving the regional ecological environment carrying capacities and optimizing the ecological spatial structure in such kinds of underdeveloped small-scale counties.

In the traditional construction of ecological security pattern, the minimum cost path is extracted as the ecological corridor based on the minimum cumulative resistance model, and the ecological nodes are identified manually. This method lacks the consideration of the exchange process of energy flow and information flow in the ecological process, resulting in a certain lack of ecological security pattern in structure and function. Therefore, an ecological security pattern construction method integrating CVOR-GWLR-Circuit model is proposed to solve the above problems by transforming natural background data into localized correction variables and adding them to the ecological security pattern evaluation model. Taking Yunnan Province as an example, firstly, the ecological security evaluation system of "Contribution, Vigor, Organization, Resilience" (CVOR) is constructed based on the importance of ecosystem services and ecosystem health, and the ecological security of Yunnan Province in 2020 is evaluated, and the ecological source areas are identified combined with nature reserves. Then, the ecological resistance surface was constructed by considering land use data and topographic factors, and the landslide sensitivity evaluation model was constructed based on geographically weighted logistic regression model (GWLR) to correct the basic resistance surface. Finally, the circuit theory model is used to extract the ecological corridor and construct the ecological security pattern in Yunnan Province. The ecological pinch points and barriers in the ecological corridor are diagnosed by the current density, so as to identify the width of the ecological corridor and identify the key areas of ecological protection and restoration. The results showed that the ecological sources area of Yunnan Province was about 69,417.78 km2, accounting for 17.6% of the total area of the study area, mainly distributed in Dehong Prefecture, southwest Yunnan, Diqing Prefecture and Nujiang Prefecture in northwest Yunnan. A total of 780 ecological corridors were generated between the ecological sources, with a total length of about 197,598.2km, an average length of 253.3km, and the longest path length of 932.1km. The ecological corridors are "spider web", linking southwest, northwest, northeast, central and southeast Yunnan Province. 36 ecological pinch points and 42 ecological barriers were identified. The research results verify that the ecological security pattern constructed by integrated CVOR-GWLR-Circuit model is more reasonable, which can provide scientific basis for regional ecological protection planning and ecological corridors design.

The study of ecological security patterns is of great significance to the balance between regional economic development and environmental protection. By optimizing the regional ecological security pattern through reasonable land-use planning and resource management strategies, the purpose of maintaining ecosystem stability and improving ecosystem service capacity can be achieved, and ultimately regional ecological security can be achieved. As a typical ecological civilization city in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Yichang City is also facing the dual challenges of urban expansion and environmental pressure. The construction and optimization of its ecological security pattern is the key to achieving the harmonious coexistence of economic development and environmental protection and ensuring regional sustainable development. Based on the ecological environment characteristics and land-use data of Yichang City, this paper uses morphological spatial pattern analysis and landscape connectivity analysis to identify core ecological sources, constructs a comprehensive ecological resistance surface based on the sensitivity–pressure–resilience (SPR) model, and combines circuit theory and Linkage Mapper tools to extract ecological corridors, ecological pinch points, and ecological barrier points and construct the ecological security pattern of Yichang City with ecological elements of points, lines, and surfaces. Finally, the community mining method was introduced and combined with habitat quality to analyze the spatial topological structure of the ecological network in Yichang City and conduct ecological security zoning management. The following conclusions were drawn: Yichang City has a good ecological background value. A total of 64 core ecological sources were screened out with a total area of 3239.5 km². In total, 157 ecological corridors in Yichang City were identified. These corridors were divided into 104 general corridors, 42 important corridors, and 11 key corridors according to the flow centrality score. In addition, 49 key ecological pinch points and 36 ecological barrier points were identified. The combination of these points, lines, and surfaces formed the ecological security pattern of Yichang City. Based on the community mining algorithm in complex networks and the principle of Thiessen polygons, Yichang City was divided into five ecological functional zones. Among them, Community No. 2 has the highest ecological security level, high vegetation coverage, close distribution of ecological sources, a large number of corridors, and high connectivity. Community No. 5 has the largest area, but it contains most of the human activity space and construction and development zones, with low habitat quality and severely squeezed ecological space. In this regard, large-scale ecological restoration projects should be implemented, such as artificial wetland construction and ecological island establishment, to supplement ecological activity space and mobility and enhance ecosystem service functions. This study aims to construct a multi-scale ecological security pattern in Yichang City, propose a dynamic zoning management strategy based on complex network analysis, and provide a scientific basis for ecological protection and restoration in rapidly urbanizing areas.

Ecological security pattern: A new idea for balancing regional development and ecological protection. A case study of the Jiaodong Peninsula, China

海口市生态用地变化与安全格局构建

Can the establishment of ecological security patterns improve ecological protection? An example of Nanchang, China

Spatial analysis enables priority selection in conservation practices for landscapes that need ecological security