Study on Changes and Driving Forces of the Ecological Assets in Urban Areas in the Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River from 2000 to 2016

Abstract

Feng, C.Y. and Zhang, J.Q., 2020. Study on changes and driving forces of the ecological assets in urban areas in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River from 2000 to 2016. In: Bai, X. and Zhou, H. (eds.), Advances in Water Resources, Environmental Protection, and Sustainable Development. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 115, pp. 485-488. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.Based on the quantitative evaluation model of ecological assets and economic evaluation method, this article selected downtown Chengdu as the research region, and studied changes of the ecological assets in urban areas in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River from 2000 to 2016 by using Landsat ETM and OLI remote sensing data from 2000 to 2016 and other auxiliary data. The results showed that the total amount of the ecological assets in downtown Chengdu from 2000 to 2016 demonstrated a continuous downward trend, from 14771.04×104 yuan in the year of 2000 to 9800.36×104 yuan in the year of 2016, with a decline of 33.65% and a coefficient of variation of 15.02%. There were three main characteristics of the changes of the ecological assets in downtown Chengdu, including temporal characteristics, component characteristics, and spatial characteristics. According to the circle analysis, the the spatial distribution of ecological assets presented a circle-shaped distribution characteristic, which decreased with the increase of the linear distance from the urban center. On the basis of the principal component analysis, population, urbanization level and GDP were the most important driving factors.This study is useful for providing a strong guarantee for the sustainable development of downtown Chengdu, as well as a scientific basis for the management of urban ecological assets in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River.