Multi-Scale Analysis of Spatial and Temporal Evolution of Ecosystem Health in the Harbin–Changchun Urban Agglomeration, China

Abstract

Urban agglomerations represent the pinnacle of spatial organization for fully developed cities. Gaining insight into the ecosystem health status of urban agglomerations in various geographical and temporal settings is essential for the long-term sustainability of both humans and the environment. Nevertheless, current research overlooks the impacts of human activities on the well-being of ecosystems, along with the effects of scaling and their implications for ecological management policies and future urban growth plans. This study enhances and refines the classic model and establishes the Vigor Organization Resilience Services Human activities (VOR-SH) evaluation model to assess the ecosystem health of the Harbin–Changchun urban agglomeration on three scales. The results reveal that the changes in the five indicators of ecosystem health within the Harbin–Changchun urban agglomeration differed across three unique periods from 2000 to 2020. In particular, energy, organization and human activities increased, whereas resilience and ecosystem services decreased. On all three scales, the overall ratings for ecosystem health showed improvement. Multi-scale spatial autocorrelation showed strong positive spatial correlations between ecosystem health clusters in the studied area. Multi-scale review results help locate key regions on a grid scale, coordinate regional management at the district-county scale and monitor huge ecosystems at the city scale. This study improves the ecosystem health model and expands multi-scale regulatory theory. This study’s findings help guide urban expansion and environmental management.