Abstract
Monitoring the ecosystem health for world natural heritage sites is essential for protecting them and benefits the formulation of more targeted protection policies. This study used Bayanbulak world natural heritage site as a case, established a framework for assessing the ecosystem health through remote sensing based on the parameters of ecosystem vigour, organization, resilience, and services. Then, we verified the obtained results through field sampling. The results show that the ecosystem health in the overall study area had declined over time, however, the health within the property zone remained at high levels and stable. The area proportion of low health was low and primarily distributed in the buffer zone. Thus, in general, the ecosystem in the study area was healthy. Besides, the ecosystem health exhibited distinct spatial agglomeration characteristics, and the degree of agglomeration enhanced over time. In addition, the field vegetation samplings were consistent with the changes in the ecosystem health levels, therefore, the result of RS monitoring of ecosystem health were credible. Thus, this study provides a scientific basis for heritage managers to formulate suitable ecological protection policies and should aid further research on the ecological monitoring of heritage sites.
Highlights
World natural heritage (WNH) sites are natural areas with global outstanding universal value, and serve as regional and background references for mankind’s cognition with respect to evolution of natural, biodiversity, bioecological processes, and natural landscape beauty [1]
There was no change in the ecosystem landscape types structure from 2000 to 2018; there were some changes in the areas of the different types
The results showed that the vegetation coverage, Simpson diversity index, Shannon-Wiener diversity index, and Margalef richness index values were consistent with the changes in the ecosystem health levels in that the higher the level of ecosystem health, the higher the values of the various vegetation indices were
Summary
World natural heritage (WNH) sites are natural areas with global outstanding universal value, and serve as regional and background references for mankind’s cognition with respect to evolution of natural, biodiversity, bioecological processes, and natural landscape beauty [1]. They are of great significance for protecting biodiversity, maintaining ecological health, and striking a balance between human development and the environment [2]. The ecological health assessment and monitoring of WNH sites is attracting a lot of research interest, in order to develop scientific methods for providing early warnings to protect these sites [6,7]
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