[Construction of regional ecological security pattern based on the "sensitivity-importance-connectivity" framework: A case study of Guizhou Province].

Abstract

The construction of an ecological security pattern is crucial to maintain ecosystem health and stability, with great significance for regional sustainable development. Following the research paradigm of "ecological source areas-ecological resistance surfaces-ecological corridors", based on the index framework of "sensitivity-importance-connectivity", we identified the ecological source areas, generated the ecological resistance surface through graded weighting of underlying surface factors and point of interest (POI) method, determined the ecological corridor, pinch point, and obstacle area using circuit theory, and constructed the ecological security pattern of Guizhou Pro-vince. Results showed that the areas of extremely sensitive of rocky desertification and soil erosion and the areas of extremely important areas of water resources forming, soil and water conservation and biodiversity in Guizhou Pro-vince were generally small and distributed differently, accounting for 1.6%, 3.7%, 25.2%, 6.1%, and 10.4% of the total area, respectively. The key ecological functional areas of the extremely sensitive to external disturbance, most important in ecosystem service and strongly connective in landscape accounted for 5.3%, 34.2%, and 27.9%, respectively. A total of 210 ecological source areas were identified, covering 27574.38 km² and with an area ratio of 15.6%. The number of the ecological corridor was counted into 463, with a total length of 10049.81 km. The amount of ecological pinch points was 490, while that of the ecological barrier was 117, area of the both were computed into 22.08 and 91.04 km², respectively. Ecologically high-resistance areas were mainly distributed in regions with highly frequent human activities. Based on the above construction, we assessed the ecological security pattern in Guizhou Province, conducted ecological security zoning, and proposed targeted protection and restoration mea-sures. The study could provide scientific references for the spatial planning of land and regional ecological protection in Guizhou Province.