Identification of critical ecological areas using the ecosystem multifunctionality-stability-integrity framework: A case study in the Yellow River basin, China

Optimization strategies of ecological security patterns through importance of ecosystem services and ecological sensitivity—A case study in the Yellow River Basin

“…In this study, we evaluated and optimized the ESPs of the YRB and compared them with some of the past studies on the YRB, and found that the characteristics of their spatial distribution were basically the same (Wang et al, 2023;Xu, 2023;Zhang et al, 2022Zhang et al, , 2023. The spatial distribution of soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and oxygen release were roughly similar to that of Wang et al (2023), while water conservation differed from its spatial distribution due to differences in data sources and calculation methods (Figure 3); ecological sources were mostly placed in areas with abundant forests and grasses, such as the junction of the upper and middle reaches, the southeast and east, and the cropland, woodland, and grassland constituting the ecological sources occupied 97.6% of its area, which were all in high agreement with the results of Wang et al (2023) (Figure 5); ecological corridors were distributed throughout the basin, and the distribution of sources and the magnitude of resistance affected the distribution characteristics of corridors.…”