Linking Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis and Circuit Theory to Identify Ecological Security Pattern in the Loess Plateau: Taking Shuozhou City as an Example

Ronglei Yang,Zhongke Bai,Zeyu Shi

doi:10.3390/land10090907

Ronglei Yang, Zhongke Bai + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/land10090907

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Abstract

Located in an ecologically fragile area in China’s eastern part of the Loess Plateau, Shuozhou City has faced environmental challenges imposed by frequent urban expansion and mining activities in recent years. As ecological security patterns (ESP) identification and optimization are significant to regional biodiversity and ecosystem services, this study combined morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and circuit theory to construct and optimize regional ESP. Results show the number and area of ecological sources in the study area decreased from 21 to 20 between 2010 and 2017. The total area of ecological sources fell from 1923.35 km2 to 1869.37 km2, with their proportion in the study area dropped from 18.14% to 17.64%. From 2010 to 2017, the number of obstacles increases from 63 to 80, mainly consisting of farmland, unused land, transportation land, and construction land. The area of obstacles reached 10.17 km2 in 2017. A framework of “one protection area, two regulation areas, and three restoration areas” is proposed to optimize the ESP of the study zone. This study explored a combination of ESP analysis tools and focused on improving regional ecosystem service and biodiversity. It will support local urban planning and provide a reference for similar studies in resource-based cities.

Highlights

Located in the northwestern part of Shanxi Province and east of China’s Loess Plateau, Shuozhou City covers an area of 10,600 km2, accounting for 6.8% of the land area of Shanxi
To fully demonstrate characteristics of ecological structure and function in the study area, this section consists of three parts
Land-use patterns, morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) patterns, ecological sources, ecological corridors, and obstacles are established in sequence

Summary

Introduction

More than 66% of the world’s population will live in cities, posing a challenge to a stable and sustainable human society-natural coupling ecological security [4]. The rapid increase in urban population and area of artificially disturbed land has led to the damage of regional environment and the degradation of ecosystem services and the loss of the original stable and sustainable landscape pattern [4,5]. It is necessary to address the threat to the ecological environment brought by urban expansion and other human activities such as coal mining, and ensure landscape connectivity and ecological security [2,5,6]

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