Abstract

Taking the lower Yellow River basin as the study area, this study aims to construct ecological networks to mitigate the negative impacts of rapid urbanization on the ecosystem. Ecological sources were identified based on morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA), habitat quality and landscape connectivity. The ecological resistance surface was constructed and corrected by integrating natural and anthropogenic factors. The spatial range of ecological corridors and some of their key nodes were identified based on circuit theory. The ecological network (EN) was finally optimized using a similarity search and cost connectivity modules. The results show that the optimized ecological network structure is more stable than before. The EN includes 23 ecological sources with a total area of 5464.8 km2 and 30 ecological corridor clusters with a total area of 2205.92 km2. Through the internal landscape heterogeneity of the corridor, 28 ecological node areas and 75 barrier areas were identified as key protection and restoration areas, with a total area of 78.44 km2 and 372.79 km2, respectively. Through the construction and optimization of EN, this study identifies key areas for promoting ecological sustainability and provides a useful framework for coordinating regional ecological conservation and economic development.

Details

Title
Identifying priority areas for conservation in the lower Yellow River basin from an ecological network perspective
Author
Kang, Jieming 1 ; Li, Chunlin 2 ; Li, Meirui 3 ; Zhang, Teng 3 ; Zhang, Baolei 3 

 College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China; Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China 
 Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China; CAS Key Laboratory of Forest Ecology and Management, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China 
 College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, Shandong, China 
Publication year
2022
Publication date
Dec 2022
Publisher
The American Association for the Advancement of Science
ISSN
20964129
e-ISSN
23328878
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2742863480
Copyright
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis Group and Science Press on behalf of the Ecological Society of China. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.