Landscape Ecological Risk Assessment and Driving Force Analysis of the Heihe River Basin in the Zhangye Area of China

Abstract

Watershed ecosystems are crucial to the overall sustainable development of a region, and a scientific and effective grasp of the characteristics of land-use change in a watershed, and the factors affecting land change, is an important prerequisite for the high-quality construction of watershed ecology, which needs to be emphasized. As the second largest inland river in the arid zone of Western China, the Heihe River Basin (HRB) has been affected by human and natural factors in recent years, and the ecological environment is relatively fragile, and there is an urgent need to analyze the ecological characteristics of the basin and to explore the relevant influencing factors in order to provide a basis for subsequent ecological management. Therefore, this article applies the landscape index, the landscape ecological risk index (ERI) model and the geodetector tools to analyze the land-use data from 2000 to 2020 in the Zhangye area of the HRB to study the characteristics of the ecological risk evolution and the driving forces affecting the ecological risk differentiation. The results show the following: (1) the area of the regional land-use change accounts for 4.99% of the total area, and the landscape pattern as a whole shows an increasing degree of fragmentation and a decreasing trend of aggregation; (2) the distribution of the ERI in the region shows a trend of being low in the center and high in the periphery, with an increase of 2.11% in the area of the lowest and lower risk and a decrease of 1.77% in the highest and higher, and the temporal change shows an increase followed by a significant decrease; (3) the human interference degree is the dominant factor influencing the spatial differentiation of the ERI in the basin area. There are significant differences between social factors, climate factors and land factors.

Landscape Ecological Risk Assessment and Spatial Pattern Evolution Analysis of the Central Yunnan Urban Agglomeration from 1995 to 2020 Based on Land Use/Cover Change

“…The selection of parameters and uncertainties in the evaluation model can impact the assessment results, necessitating a reasonable choice of research scale to obtain reliable assessment outcomes. In terms of the research scope, the primary focus has been on key regions such as watersheds [13][14][15][16], developed cities [17][18][19], and coastal zones [20][21][22]. However, there is a notable gap in research, particularly concerning the highland mountainous urban clusters characterized by ecological fragility and sensitivity.…”

Landscape Ecological Risk Assessment of Kriya River Basin in Xinjiang and Its Multi-Scenario Simulation Analysis

“…The ecological risk assessment method, which is based on the LULC LER, can be used to assess the ecological status of a watershed from both an ecological and landscape perspective [17,20,21]. The method is able to map the interactions between landscape patterns and ecological processes and focuses on describing the spatial and temporal variability of ecological risk, the impact of the spatial distribution of landscape components on ecological risk, and these three areas [22,23].…”