Establishment of an Ecological Security Pattern under Arid Conditions Based on Ecological Carrying Capacity: A Case Study of Arid Area in Northwest China

Abstract

With the expansion of the social economy and adjustment of environmental policies, particularly with the onset of development policies for the western region, ecosystems in the arid areas of Northwest China have undergone profound changes. This study collected soil, topographical, climate, and nighttime light data to develop a set of ecological vulnerability assessment indexes based on the background ecological characteristics of the arid areas of Northwest China. The spatiotemporal evolution of ecological carrying capacity was analyzed by our team using Spatial Principal Component Analysis (SPCA) in 2000, 2007, 2012, and 2018 to construct an ecological security pattern. The results revealed that the ecological carrying capacities of the arid areas in the northwest were primarily weak, albeit decreasing, while those areas with strong carrying capacities were increasing. In terms of spatial distribution, the ecological carrying capacities of the Hexi, Northern Xinjiang, and Western Inner Mongolia regions were on the rise, while those of the Southern Xinjiang region were declining. The Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model was used to extract 51 road-type, river-type, and green corridors with a total length of 7285.43 km. A total of 71 nodes representing important patches, wet rivers, and ecologically fragile areas were extracted. According to the calculated results, the arid region of the northwest was divided into 16 ecological security patterns, which were optimized according to changes in their ecological carrying capacities.