Ecological Risk Assessment of Forest Landscapes in Lushan National Nature Reserve in Jiangxi Province, China

Abstract

It is highly valuable to analyze and assess the landscape ecological risk of nature reserves to prevent and resolve ecological risks, as well as to effectively protect and maintain the sustainable development of nature reserves. Taking the forest landscape of the Lushan National Nature Reserve as its study object, this study performed grid processing for the nature reserve and classified forest landscape types using the Forest Resource Inventory Database in 2019. A landscape ecological index model was constructed to evaluate the ecological risk. Global and local Moran index values were used to reveal the autocorrelations for ecological risk. The geodetector method was used to comprehensively analyze the effects of natural and human factors on ecological risk. The results showed that, in general, the ecological risk level of the nature reserve was relatively low, as the proportion of the lowest-, lower-, and medium-risk areas to the total forestry land area accounted for 91.03%. The ecological risk ranking of each functional zone, from high to low, was in the order of the experimental zone, the buffer zone, and the core zone. The ecological risk levels of different forest landscape types were closely related to their area, spatial distribution, and succession stage, as well as human factors, such as the proximity to roads and settlements, etc. The forest landscape with the highest ecological risk was the Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook. forest, and the forest landscape with the lowest ecological risk was other forestry land. Ecological risk had a positive spatial correlation and tended to be aggregated in space, demonstrating coupling with the proximity to roads and settlements. The ecological risk was affected by both human and natural factors, among which human factors played a dominant role. The proximity to roads and settlements, the relative humidity, and the temperature were the main driving factors. The interaction of pairwise factors had a stronger influence than that of single factors. Therefore, controlling the intensity of human activities and enhancing the coordination between humans and nature are beneficial for alleviating the ecological risks in the forest landscapes of nature reserves.