Simulation of Regionally Ecological Land Based on a Cellular Automation Model: A Case Study of Beijing, China

Hualin Xie,Chih-Chun Kung,Xiubin Li,Yanting Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph9082986

Abstract

Ecological land is like the “liver” of a city and is very useful to public health. Ecological land change is a spatially dynamic non-linear process under the interaction between natural and anthropogenic factors at different scales. In this study, by setting up natural development scenario, object orientation scenario and ecosystem priority scenario, a Cellular Automation (CA) model has been established to simulate the evolution pattern of ecological land in Beijing in the year 2020. Under the natural development scenario, most of ecological land will be replaced by construction land and crop land. But under the scenarios of object orientation and ecosystem priority, the ecological land area will increase, especially under the scenario of ecosystem priority. When considering the factors such as total area of ecological land, loss of key ecological land and spatial patterns of land use, the scenarios from priority to inferiority are ecosystem priority, object orientation and natural development, so future land management policies in Beijing should be focused on conversion of cropland to forest, wetland protection and prohibition of exploitation of natural protection zones, water source areas and forest parks to maintain the safety of the regional ecosystem.

Highlights

Land use and cover change (LUCC) have various impacts on global climate change, food safety, soil degradation and biodiversity and received much attention from different disciplines [1,2,3,4,5]
Total ecological land decreases 4.5% and construction land increased 34.78% in the past five years, indicating that loss of ecological land is mainly caused by urbanization
The results show that the ecosystem priority scenario effectively protects the dominant patch of ecological land and is able to maintain the ecological security of the entire landscape

Summary

Introduction

Land use and cover change (LUCC) have various impacts on global climate change, food safety, soil degradation and biodiversity and received much attention from different disciplines [1,2,3,4,5]. With the expansion of urban and industrial land requirements in China, land use with ecological protection are present in the urban, agro-forest and environment protection planning documents, including nature reserves, drinking water sources, country parks, wetland parks and ecological forests. Those land use types are obviously distinguished from city and rural space and are defied by either ecological land or ecological space [10]. Ecological land is like the “liver” of a city, which helps maintain the health of a regional ecosystem and is very useful to public health [11,12]. Some unreasonable land use types due to urbanization and industrialization have threatened ecological land

Methods

Results

Conclusion