Construction feasibility evaluation for potential ecological corridors under different widths: A case study of Chengdu in China

Abstract

Accelerating urbanization has led to shrinkage of natural habitats, intensification of landscape fragmentation, reduction of cropland and forest areas, and degradation of biodiversity. Against this background, considering ecological corridors are important linear structures connected habitat patches, thereby helping to enhance urban ecological resilience and protect biodiversity. A growing number of researches focus on the identification of potential ecological corridors and evaluate the relative importance of such corridors on the effects of connected habitat patches. However, among the evaluation process, previous studies ignored the linear structures of corridors, didn’t explore corridor width and construction form differences. Accordingly, this study used minimum cumulative resistance model (MCRM) to identify potential ecological corridors. After that, we designed the construction feasibility evaluation system for evaluating the relative importance of such corridors with different widths, and applied it with the rapidly expanding city of Chengdu in western China. The results show that internal characteristics of potential ecological corridors vary greatly under different widths. Using the construction feasibility evaluation system, we found that more than 75% of corridors in Chengdu are difficult to construct, and construction sequence has obvious differences under different widths, besides provided a reference for construction and the selection of width for potential corridors in Chengdu. This research highlights the importance of width selection in corridor evaluation, the construction feasibility evaluation provided reference information on identification, analysis, construction sequence and construction practices for urban ecological network spatial planning.