An urban ecosystem assessment method and its application

Abstract

The concept of an eco鄄city is the ultimate trend for future cities. Supported by the principles of ecology and sustainable development theory, an eco鄄city is a sustainable urban area developed and designed to create a regional natural city environment. An eco鄄city is an artificial ecosystem featuring a clean and desirable environment compatible with continuous economic improvement. An eco鄄city is beneficial to human health, prosperity, social harmony and progress, and it allows for expanding opportunities and is full of complexity. Urbanization continues to increase along with the development of human society, civilization and the economy. Prosperity also brings ecological and environmental problems to cities, such as climate change, pollution, energy shortages, ecological damage and the disruption and destruction of local communities, all of which seriously threaten the health of urban ecosystems. In general, people have started to look at cities from the perspective of maintaining a balance between ecological integrity and sustainable development. The construction of eco鄄cities has gradually become a global focus point. Urban ecological systems are complex with natural, economic and social subsystems. The primary functions of urban ecosystems are to provide the human residents with satisfactory and productive lives, and with entertainment and local transportation. The characteristics of urban ecosystems are: (1) they are mainly artificial man鄄made ecosystems, (2) they are incomplete ecosystems, and (3) there is an obvious flow of human harnessed energy in urban ecosystems. The structure and characteristics of urban ecosystems determine their basic function. Because urban ecosystems are similar to natural ecosystems, urban ecosystems have the functions of production, energy flow,

The Evaluation of Changsha Urban Ecosystem Sustainable Development Ability Based on Improved TOPSIS Model

“…Indicator system as a organic whole, indicators within the system has a certain relationship. Indicators screening not only take into account their respective reflection to the characteristics and conditions of the evaluation objects, also should consider the influence, produced by interaction within them, to the dynamic change of the system [3] . The indicators should include elements about ecological concepts and meet the demand of the sustainable development of the theory as much as possible.…”