Landscape ecological risk evaluation coupled with ecosystem service improvement and its spatial heterogeneity analysis: a case study of the Yellow River Source Area

Abstract

The ecological environment of the Yellow River Source Area (YRSA) is crucial to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and its ecological risk management is important for the ecological protection and sustainable development of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. this study improves the traditional evaluation method of landscape ecological risk(LER) based on ecosystem services and detects its spatial heterogeneity by using Geodetector. The study results are as follows: (1) The temporal distribution of LER in the YRSA is similar to its landscape vulnerability. In the past 20 years, the areas of its high, medium-high, medium, and medium-low ecological risk areas have been converted to low ecological risk areas to varying degrees. (2) Overall, the spatial difference in LER in the YRSA is significant, mainly dominated by HH and HL clustering. Meanwhile, the Moran’I index of the LER Index decreases year by year, indicating that the spatial aggregation of the LER decreases and the spatial autocorrelation weakens year by year. (3) Climatic factors have the most significant influence on the ecological risk of the landscape in the YRSA, followed by topographic factors and anthropogenic factors.