Temporal-spatial variation and the affecting factors of protected areas in Guizhou, China.

Abstract

The establishment of protected areas is the bottom line of ecological security for promoting the construction of ecological civilization and supporting economic and social development, which is an important strategy to realize sustainable development and maintain ecological security. In order to reveal the large spatial process of protected areas and its influencing factors, we used the methods of nearest neighbor index, kernel density, and standard deviational ellipse to analyze the temporal-spatial variation characteristics of the protected areas in Guizhou Province from 2002 to 2017, as well as the influencing factors combined with geo-detectors. The results showed that, during the study period, the number, area, and types of protected areas in Guizhou Province showed a diversified and rapid development, forming a protected area system with nature reserves, forest parks and scenic spots as the main body and wetland parks, geoparks and natural heritage sites as the supplement. The spatial cohesion of protected areas was strengthened, the scope of spatial distribution was expanding, and the speed of spatial movement was declining, forming a spatial pattern dominated by the northeast-southwest direction and gradually stable. The coalescence process in protected areas was strongly influenced by topography and vegetation distribution. The protected areas tended to cluster in gentle terrain around rivers and mountains and in areas of concentrated vegetation. The spatial differentiation of protected areas was jointly affected by multiple factors at different levels. The explanatory power of different factors to the spatial differentiation of protected areas was different. Among them, the normalized difference vegetation index, areas of forest and highway mileage were the common main factors affecting the spatial differentiation of the number and area of protected areas, and the explanatory power of different factors was significantly consolidated after interaction, characterized as nonlinear or bi-factor enhancement.