Landscape changes and their ecological effects of Miaodao Archipelago with human disturbances and under natural conditions in the past 30 years

Abstract

The modern landscape patterns of islands usually show obvious spatial heterogeneity and complex ecological effects due to the vulnerability of ecosystems with natural characteristics under increasing human activities. In this work, we studied the variation in landscape pattern of the Miaodao Archipelago in Bohai Sea, North China, from 1990 to 2019, and an evaluation index system was established to explore the impacts of natural conditions and human disturbances on the ecological effects in the pressure-state-response (PSR) framework. Empirical analysis was conducted on the natural conditions, human disturbances, and ecological effects. The results show that forest was the main component of the landscape pattern in the archipelago. Both of the areas of forest and construction land were increasing, and the areas of cropland and grassland were declining. Other landscape types changed slightly, and the landscape fragmentation was increasing. The natural condition exhibited positive effects while human disturbance showed negative effects on the local ecology. Human disturbances come mainly from shoreline use while the natural conditions were mainly from the elevation change. The ecological effects were resulted mainly from the net primary productivity and water yield.