Evaluation of City Ecological Vulnerability in Shanxi Province

Abstract

Ecological vulnerability assessment is an important basis for comprehensive regional ecological sustainable assessment. Evaluating ecological vulnerability of Shanxi Province, a large coal mine province in China, is helpful for the restoration and construction of the ecological environment and sustainable cities. This paper establishes an ecological vulnerability evaluation index system based on ecological vulnerability research methods, calculates the weight of each indicator through the entropy weight method using the quantitative analysis to obtain the ecological vulnerability of each prefecture-level city, and evaluates the ecological vulnerability of Shanxi Province. The results show that Shanxi Province has a moderately fragile, fragile and extremely fragile land area of 77.39% of the total areas. Cities of Yangquan, Jincheng, and Luliang are in a mildly vulnerable grade. Cities of Taiyuan, Changzhi, Shuozhou and Linfen are at a moderate fragile level. Cities of Datong, Jinzhong, and Yuncheng are at a fragile level of strength. Xinzhou is at a very high level of fragility. Our results imply the status quo of the ecological environment in Shanxi Province is not optimistic.