Simulating land-use change and its effect on biodiversity conservation in a watershed in northwest China

Abstract

Introduction: Land-use management strategies play a major role in biodiversity change. In many parts of the world, local governments are under increasing pressure to regulate human activity to mitigate negative impacts on ecosystems. Outcomes/other: This study aimed to analyze the effects of different land-use patterns on biodiversity change across a typical artificial desert watershed. We first analyzed land-cover change based on past and future management scenarios in a watershed spanning Gaotai, Linze, and Ganzhou counties in northwest China. We then analyzed the effect of different land-use patterns on biodiversity change in the watershed. We found that the crucial landcover changes are likely to occur in the wetland reserves and areas established for the Grain for Green Project around the oases, and such changes could affect biodiversity throughout the entire watershed landscape. Discussion: The use of spatial analysis to illustrate explicit changes in ecosystems is useful in fostering biodiversity awareness and the need for decision-making at different scales. Conclusion: Thus, these findings indicate that land-use management strategies for the middle and southeast parts of the watershed are particularly important for future management of biodiversity and the integrated ecosystem services of the entire watershed landscape.

Modeling Land Use and Land Cover Changes and Their Effects on Biodiversity in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…The investigators used the InVEST Habitat Quality model and demonstrated spatial approaches to classifying landscapes for habitat quality based on the size, density, and distribution of native vegetation in the landscape. A study in China modeled land use change and its effect on biodiversity conservation using two land use management scenarios [42]. The investigators developed scenarios based on the protection levels of the local government plans and projected biodiversity at local and regional scales.…”

“…Maximum distance, habitat suitability, relative sensitivity of habitats to threats (higher numbers indicate more habitat suitability and more sensitivity to threats). Source: [38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

Spatio-Temporal Changes in Wildlife Habitat Quality in the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem

“…where R is the number of all the ecological threat factors, D xj is the set of all grid cells on raster map r, W r is the threat weight that relates the destructiveness of a degradation source to all habitats, r y indexes all grid cells in raster map r, i rxy is a function describing the exponential decay in habitat quality as a function of distance from ecological threat factors, β x is the level of accessibility to grid cell x, with 1 indicating complete accessibility and 0 complete inaccessibility, and S jr is the sensitivity of land use type j (habitat type) to the ecological threat factor r. Finally, the habitat quality Q xj of LULC j is calculated based on the habitat suitability of LULC j using [48,62]:…”

Integration of InVEST-habitat quality model with landscape pattern indexes to assess mountain plant biodiversity change: A case study of Bailongjiang watershed in Gansu Province

“…Xu et al (2013) identified and calculated the biodiversity hotspots by InVEST biodiversity model in the Wenchuan earthquake-hit area. Liang and Liu (2017) analyzed the effects of different land-use patterns on biodiversity change based on InVEST biodiversity model and simulation method in Zhangye, China. In summary, integration of InVEST model, satellite image and landscape ecological methods to assess the regional biodiversity was feasible (Lausch et al, 2016;Remme et al, 2016;Xie et al, 2017).…”