The Construction of Ecological Network under the Stress of Road Landscape in Dafeng, A Coastal County in China

Abstract

Zhang, Z.; Liu, R.; Wang G.; Jia, Z.; Zhou, Y.; Cao, L., and Zhou, S., 2019. The construction of ecological network under the stress of road landscape in Dafeng, A coastal county in China. In: Lee, J.L.; Yoon, J.-S.; Cho, W.C.; Muin, M., and Lee, J. (eds.), The 3rd International Water Safety Symposium. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 91, pp. 276-280. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.In the process of rapid urbanization in coastal cities, the issue of landscape fragmentation, resulting from continuous expansion of artificial landscapes, has become increasingly prominent. Therefore, it is of great significance to build up ecological networks to connect fragmented habitats and protect biodiversity. From the perspective of impacts on natural landscapes of road system, the paper takes Dafeng, a coastal county in China, as a case study area, processes the selection of ecological sources, assignment and correction of resistance surface, and finally accomplishes the construction of ecological network, supported by techniques including GIS, Conefor Sensinode and so forth. The results demonstrates that the road network hinders the biological circulation between coastal wetland and interior landscape, resulting in the destruction of natural landscape integrity; with the modification of resistance surface based on the construction of road buffer, it can be observed that regional ecological resistance level increases significantly and the original long linear ecological corridors tend to be short with twists and turns; the wetland patches and corridor connecting them rank first in terms of the importance of landscape connectivity, which indicates that coastal management should be strengthened in avoidance of the aggravation of the landscape fragmentation under the stress of road landscape.