Construction of Landscape Ecological Security Pattern in the Zhundong Region, Xinjiang, NW China

Abstract

The Xinjiang Zhundong Economic and Technological Development Zone, which contains the largest coalfield in China, is a mega energy base for west–east gas transmission and outbound electricity transmission in China; however, resource exploitation and the region’s arid climate have led to the region’s ecological environment being increasingly vulnerable. The morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) method and landscape connectivity were used in this study to identify the ecological sources and extract the ecological corridors and ecological nodes based on the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model, used to construct the landscape ecological security pattern in the Zhundong region from 2016 to 2021. The results show that (a) from 2016 to 2021, the area of ecological sources increased by 117.86 ha and the distribution density of which decreased from the southern-central region to the northern and northwestern regions. (b) From 2016 to 2021, the number of ecological corridors and ecological nodes decreased, and the ecological corridors with dense distributions in the south gradually moved to the north and west. The length of the ecological corridors in the south gradually became longer, and the number of ecological corridors connecting the east and west in the north increased. (c) The landscape ecological security pattern of the Zhundong region was constructed by “a network and multiple points” using the model of ecological sources–ecological corridors–ecological nodes. The findings of this study provide a scientific foundation for the construction of an ecological security development plan and the ecologically protective development of coal resources in Zhundong.