Ecosystem degradation and conversion are leading to a widespread reduction in the provision of ecosystem services. It is crucial for the governance of regional land spaces to rapidly identify key areas for ecosystem restoration. Herein, we combined the InVEST Habitat Quality Model with the granularity inverse method to identify ecological sources in Jiashi county, China, based on the “source-corridor” ecological security pattern paradigm. The minimum cumulative resistance model and circuit theory were adopted to diagnose the ecological “pinch points”, barrier points, break points, and key restoration areas for land space. Our results show that: (1) the area of the ecological source and the total length of the ecological corridor were identified as 1331.13 km2 and 316.30 km, respectively; (2) there were 164 key ecological “pinch points” and 69 key ecological barrier points in Jiashi county, with areas of 15.13 km2 and 14.57 km2, respectively. Based on the above ecological security pattern, recovery strategies are put forward to improve regional ecosystem health. This study describes the best practices which can be used to guide the planning and implementation of ecosystem restoration at the local landscape scale.

Ecological corridors can improve the connectivity between different habitat regions, ultimately halting the loss of biodiversity and habitat fragmentation. Building ecological corridors is a crucial step in protecting biodiversity. Ecological corridors had previously been built primarily on nature reserves, ignoring ecosystem services. In this study, a novel approach to building ecological corridors is put forth that takes into account a variety of ecosystem services, morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA), and connectivity methodologies to identify significant ecological sources. Ecological corridors and significant strategic nodes are created based on the minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR) and circuit theory in order to construct the Yangtze River Delta’s ecological security pattern. The research found that: (1) the identified ecological sources are 90,821.84 km2, and the total length of ecological corridors is 4704.03 km. (2) In total, 141 ecological restoration areas are identified, with a total area of 2302.77 km2; 151 ecological protection areas are identified, with a total area of 5303.43 km2. This study can provide valuable insights into the establishment of ecological patterns and the construction of priority restoration and protection areas in the ecological restoration of the Yangtze River Delta.