Multi-Scenario Simulation of Land Use and Habitat Quality in the Guanzhong Plain Urban Agglomeration, China

Abstract

Regional habitat quality is a proxy of biodiversity. Simulating changes in land use and habitat quality in urban agglomerations is the scientific basis for promoting the optimal allocation of land resources and building ecological civilizations in urban agglomerations. Therefore, we established a research framework mainly consisting of the Future Land Use Simulation (FLUS) model with the Integrated Valuation of Environmental Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model to predict the spatial and temporal distribution of habitat quality. In addition, we set three scenarios which were a natural development scenario, a cultivated land protection scenario, and an ecological protection scenario to analyze the changes of habitat quality in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration in 2035. The results showed that: (1) the FLUS model had an excellent effect on the simulation of land-use change in the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration, with an overall accuracy of 0.952 and a kappa coefficient of 0.924. (2) From 2000 to 2035, the cultivated land area of the study area, which was mainly transferred into construction land and grassland, shrank due to the process of urbanization. (3) The habitat quality score of this region gradually decreased from 2000 to 2020, and it continued to decrease to 0.6921 in 2035 under the natural development scenario, while it increased under the other two scenarios. The low-value areas of habitat quality were mainly located in the middle of this region with Xi’an as the core, whereas the high-value areas were mainly distributed in the southern Qinling Mountains and the northern Loess Plateau. (4) Of the different scenarios, the ecological protection scenario had the highest habitat quality, while the natural development scenario had the lowest. Besides this, we also found that the cultivated protection scenario had high habitat quality, which was mainly because the rate of occupation of ecological land was controlled. The results are expected to provide a scientific basis for optimizing the spatial allocation of land resources and promoting the sustainable use of land space in other ecologically fragile urban agglomerations.

Spatial–temporal evolution and correlation analysis between habitat quality and landscape patterns based on land use change in Shaanxi Province, China

“…Due to the special geographic conditions of the Qinling national forest park and Qinba Mountain area, the disturbance degree of human beings is small, and all kinds of natural landscapes are good habitats for organisms, which were mainly in high quality habitats and in higher quality habitats (Zhang et al., 2021 ). In recent years, the Guanzhong Plain has witnessed rapid economic development and rapid urban expansion (Ye et al., 2022 ). The invasion of various artificial landscapes has seriously threatened the surrounding habitats, resulting in the low‐quality habitats.…”

Optimization and Construction of Ecological Security Patterns Based on Natural and Cultivated Land Disturbance

“…The maximum impact distance, weights, and attenuation-related types of stressors, as well as the sensitivity of different habitat types to stressors, were determined by combining the actual situation in the study area with reference to the research results of similar plain areas and consulting experts [47,48], and the specific classification criteria are shown in Tables 2 and 3. Impact distance and spatial weights were used to compute the external threat intensity, and habitat quality was evaluated based on the suitability of various land uses and the sensitivity of the corresponding threat sources [49,50]. The specific calculation process equation is as follows.…”

Construction of an ecological security pattern for the Guanzhong Plain urban agglomeration: Scale perspective and hierarchy demand

“…It has a strategic location as a pilot area for inland ecological civilization construction (National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, 2018). As a consequence of ongoing rampant urbanization and industrialization, the regional ecosystem of the GPUA has been detrimentally affected by human development and construction activities, resulting in ecological environment damage, habitat fragmentation, and increased risk of natural disasters, thereby posing a prominent threat to the healthy and efficient development of the region and ecological harmony (Song et al, 2020;Yang and Cai, 2020;Ye et al, 2022). Regional air quality is also notably poor, with severe pollution being of frequent occurrence, and the environmental capacity is close to threshold level (Chen et al, 2022).…”