Landscape ecological risk assessment and influencing factor analysis of basins in suburban areas of large cities – A case study of the Fuchunjiang River Basin, China

Abstract

Landscape ecological risk reflects the impact of human activities or natural hazards on landscape patterns, functions, and processes in a region. The scientific assessment of its evolutionary trends can play an essential role in maintaining and improving regional human wellbeing. This study focused on the Fuchunjiang River Basin in the suburbs of Hangzhou, a large city in China with a high degree of landscape heterogeneity and rapid economic growth. Based on land use data from 1990 to 2020, an ecological risk assessment model and geodetector tools were combined to study the spatiotemporal variation characteristics and influencing factors of landscape ecological risk in the basin. The results showed the following: (1) from 1990 to 2020, the landscape pattern of various land use types showed a general trend of an increasing degree of agglomeration and decreasing loss index; (2) the spatial distribution pattern of landscape ecological risk was “high in the northwest and low in the southeast.” From basin to township scales, landscape ecological risk showed a decreasing trend on long time scales, although the changes were relatively drastic in short time periods; (3) GDP, human interference, area of urban and rural residential land, area of arable land transferred in, and area of arable land transferred out were the dominant influencing factors of landscape ecological risk; (4) the coupling between landscape ecological risk and GDP in 2020 exhibited an inverted “U” shaped relationship, indicating that the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) may have the same applicability in the ecological risk management; (5) according to the main functions of different risk agglomerations, targeted ecological risk management strategies were proposed. In short, this study carried out the landscape ecological risk assessment at the township scale for the first time, quantitatively analyzed the relationship between economic development and ecological risk, and proposed targeted risk prevention strategies, which are instructive for other basin areas that are experiencing rapid urbanization in the world.

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

“…Through the results of the study, it can be seen that the distribution of the ERI level in the Zhangye area of the HRB presents a trend of being low in the central area and high in the other areas; therefore, to reduce the regional ERI, we can adopt the optimization idea of central control and peripheral management and divide the area into the central strict control area and the peripheral key control area (Figure 8). This localized, small-scale zoning governance can create synergies at larger spatial scales [35]. factor has a stronger explanatory power for the spatial differentiation of ecological risk after the interaction than the single-factor interaction, indicating that there is a certain connection between the effects of each factor on the ecological risk of regional landscapes and that they are not completely independent of each other, and this result confirms the findings in the studies of Karimian et al [33] and Hu et al [34].…”

“…Through the results of the study, it can be seen that the distribution of the ERI level in the Zhangye area of the HRB presents a trend of being low in the central area and high in the other areas; therefore, to reduce the regional ERI, we can adopt the optimization idea of central control and peripheral management and divide the area into the central strict control area and the peripheral key control area (Figure 8). This localized, smallscale zoning governance can create synergies at larger spatial scales [35]. The central strict control area contains Ganzhou District, Linze County and Minle County areas, which are basically the lowest, lower and medium ecological risk areas with excellent ecological resources.…”