The Construction of Ecological Security Patterns in Coastal Areas Based on Landscape Ecological Risk Assessment-A Case Study of Jiaodong Peninsula, China.

Yichen Yan,Guokun Chen,Hongrun Ju,Shengrui Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph182212249

Abstract

Increasing land utilization, population aggregation and strong land–sea interaction make coastal areas an ecologically fragile environment. The construction of an ecological security pattern is important for maintaining the function of the coastal ecosystem. This paper takes Jiaodong Peninsula in China, a hilly coastal area, as an example for evaluating landscape ecological risk within a comprehensive framework of “nature–neighborhood–landscape”, based on spatial principal component analysis, and it constructs the ecological security pattern based on the minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR). The results showed that the overall level of ecological risk in the study area was medium. The connectivity between the areas of low landscape ecological risk was relatively low, and the high risk areas were concentrated in the north of the Peninsula. A total of 11 key ecological corridors of three types (water, green space and road corridors) and 105 potential corridors were constructed. According to the ecological network pattern, landscape ecological optimization suggestions were proposed: key corridors in the north and south of Jiaodong Peninsula should be connected; urban development should consider current ecological sources and corridors to prevent landscape fragmentation; and the ecological roles of potential corridors should be strengthened. This paper can provide a theoretical and practical basis for ecological planning and urban master planning in coastal areas in the future.

Highlights

By analyzing the load matrix of each principal component (Table 3), it could be concluded that the load of Shannon’s evenness index (SHEI) in the first two principal components was higher, which reflected the importance of the distribution and diversity of different patches to landscape ecological security in the study area
The load of distance from urban areas was higher in the third principal component, which indicated that urban land expansion had a significant impact on the comprehensive landscape ecological risk in the Jiaodong Peninsula
contagion index (CONTAG) had a higher load in the fourth principal component, which indicated that trends towards agglomeration or extension among different patch types had a strong impact on ecological security

Summary

Introduction

The construction of ecological civilization is an important goal of sustainable economic and social development [1]. Coastal areas have become key areas for the construction of ecological civilization in China due to their unique natural environment and extremely high socio-economic status [2]. The ecological safety of coastal areas receives extensive attention because of their complex and fragile natural environment and their close interactions with frequent and violent human activities. As the impact of human activities on the ecological environment in coastal areas has intensified, both urban and natural ecosystem service functions have undergone a certain degree of degradation, such as loss of agricultural land [3], destruction of animal habitats [4], decrease in biodiversity [5], fragmentation of landscape patterns [6], land desertification [7], difficulties in ecological flow movement [8]

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Conclusion