Relationship of construction land expansion and ecological environment changes in the Three Gorges reservoir area of China

Abstract

With the rapid development of urbanization, the disorderly construction land expansion takes up too much ecological space, leading to the exacerbation of the regional internal ecosystem. Therefore, exploring the coordinated relationship between construction land expansion and ecological environment change has become a key issue for regional sustainable development. Based on remote sensing technology, the evaluation system of construction land expansion and ecological environment change in the Three Gorges Reservoir area was constructed. The spatial–temporal evolution of construction land expansion and ecological environment change from 1995 to 2020 and their coordination were analyzed, and they were divided into coupling and coordinated development types. The research shows the following findings: Firstly, in the year 2020, the comprehensive value of construction land expansion reached 0.8635, an increase of more than 8 times compared to 1995, indicating a significant trend of rapid expansion. Secondly, the comprehensive value of ecological environment change from 1995 to 2020 remained between 0.4 and 0.6 and continued to change in a good direction. And improving the remote sensing ecological indicators has expanded the difference in ecological environment quality in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area. Thirdly, the coupled model increased from 0.0534 to 0.7951 from 1995 to 2020, which is in a low-level and slow-growing state, and social and economic development does not completely depend on destroying the ecological environment quality. Finally, three types of coordinated development are divided: ecological environment protection type, development and protection in tandem type, and ecological environment consumable type. Differentiated regulation strategies and suggestions are also proposed.