Regional Ecological Security Assessment: A Case Study of Tongling City,Anhui Province

Abstract

The focus of this study is to assess regional ecological security, based on a method of combining the ecological sensitivity evaluation and the ecosystem services evaluation of Tongling City, China. This approach may reduce the possible errors caused by basing the assessment on only one of these two evaluation methods. The PCA (Principal Component Analysis) and rectified ESV (Ecosystem Services Value) methods were employed in this study with the support of SPSS, RS and ARCGIS. The study showed the following results: the ecological sensitive area is mainly located among the wetland concentrated areas along the river in the north and the forested and green spaces within and around the city, and the area with the highest value is the mountainous areas in the south; the northern wetland area along the river and the southern forested mountain area have high ecosystem services value. Finally, the study identified the ecologically fragile and important services areas, and offered a reliable reference for Tongling's ecological protection and urban growth decisions by dividing the ecological security evaluation areas into areas with low, mid and high ecological security levels.