Abstract
The ecological environment is suffering from great human disturbance. Scientific assessment of landscape ecological risks can provide scientific guidance for land use management. This study focused on Chaoyang County in China, used ecological risk assessment methods to characterize the impact of land use/land cover (LUCC) change, and revealed the risk aggregation pattern with the help of spatial autocorrelation analysis. The results showed that ecological risk was increased from 2000 to 2010 but decreased from 2010 to 2018. The ecological risk of the Daling River and Xiaoling River basin was at a relatively high level, and low in the northwest and southeast of the study which covered by forest land. Occupying cultivated land for built-up and large-scale deforestation were two of the main factors to contribute to the increase of ecological risk. The distribution of High-High (HH) and Low-Low (LL) risk agglomeration areas was basically the same as risk levels, but the scope is smaller and more precise. Thus, HH and LH risk agglomeration area should be paid more attention to prevent the adverse impact of adjacent areas. Our study gave a novel perspective to investigate the pattern of ecological risk in order for government managers to identify key risk areas.
Highlights
Global warming is unprecedented challenge mankind faces today and posed a serious threat to the sustainable development of human society
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proposed that achieving the 1.5 ◦ C temperature control target was expected to avoid the irreversible negative effects of climate change on human society and natural ecosystems, and this required the joint efforts of all countries to reach net zero
Land use/land cover change has an effect on the increase of global atmospheric carbon dioxide content, second to the effects of burning fossil fuels [3]
Summary
Global warming is unprecedented challenge mankind faces today and posed a serious threat to the sustainable development of human society. Land use/land cover change has an effect on the increase of global atmospheric carbon dioxide content, second to the effects of burning fossil fuels [3]. Large-scale land development and deforestation have led to the imbalance of the internal structure and function of the natural ecosystem [6,7], which inevitably leads to a series of ecological and environmental problems [8], such as soil erosion [9], land desertification [10], and biodiversity loss. These problems could cause an increase in ecological risk [11]. The increased ecological risk constrains the rational use of land, which creates an undesirable cycle
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