Abstract
Hemeroby is an integrated indicator used to measure the impact and degree of all human interventions on ecological components or ecosystems. The constant exploitation of resources is a strong interference of human beings to the natural environment. With the depletion of non-renewable resources, some cities with resource exploitation as their main industry—“resource-based cities”—are facing great development pressure. In order to quantify the impact of human disturbance on the natural environment and provide some scientific support for policy makers of the resource-based city, we used remote sensing images and landscape pattern metrics, introduced the synthetic hemeroby index model and analyzed the relationship between human disturbance and landscape pattern during 1990–2017. The results showed that: (1) The hemeroby in Daqing continued to rise during 1990–2017, and the main factor was the continuous expansion of the construction land and the reclamation of farmland. (2) In the areas with different hemeroby, there were significant differences in landscape pattern. In the areas with high-level hemeroby, the heterogeneity of landscape pattern was low, the aggregation among patches was high, and the shape of patches was regular, whereas the landscape pattern in the areas with medium-level hemeroby was just opposite. Although the heterogeneity of landscape pattern and the aggregation among patches were high in the areas with low-level hemeroby, the complexity of landscape was low and the shape of patches was regular. (3) In the temporal dimension, the increase of hemeroby contributed to the complexity of patch shape, the decrease of the aggregation among patches, and the fragmentation of landscape pattern. In the spatial dimension, the response in landscape pattern to human disturbance was relatively insensitive in the areas with low-level hemeroby, and this response was basically same in the high-level hemeroby and the whole study areas.
Highlights
In the past decades, rapid population growth and socioeconomic development have led to an increase in human productive activities [1,2,3,4]
Sudden and unstable natural disturbances are difficult for human beings to control, while human disturbances related to natural resources development and utilization as well as urban development can be regulated to a certain extent [20,21,22,23,24,25]
From the perspective of temporal change of landscape pattern, with the increase of human disturbance, the aggregation among patches in the study area decreased, and the landscape pattern developed towards fragmentation and complexity, whereas in the spatial dimension, we found different laws, which was different from the previous studies
Summary
Rapid population growth and socioeconomic development have led to an increase in human productive activities [1,2,3,4]. Human activities cover almost all regions of the planet and have changed one-third to one-half of the Earth’s surface system by many different means [5,6,7,8,9,10] Global environmental issues, such as pollution, desertification and biodiversity loss, which are attracting people’s attention to the environment on which human beings depend [11,12,13]. These problems have seriously damaged the ability of many ecosystems to provide important services needed by human beings and posed a serious threat to the sustainable development of human society [10,14,15]. It is of great significance to realize the sustainable development of human society and natural environment by monitoring the impact of human activities on the surface ecological environment and regulating the direction and speed of human activities [36,37,38]
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