The rapid process of urbanization, accompanied by the sharp increase of urban population and expansion of artificial surface, has resulted in the loss of natural ecosystems and the degradation of ecosystem services. Identifying and protecting key places that have high importance for ecological sustainability are great challenges. Ecological security patterns are such an integrated approach to protecting regional ecological sustainability. In this study, taking Yunnan Province, China as a case study area, ecological sources were identified through ecosystem services, and circuit theory was used to model ecosystem processes in heterogeneous landscapes via calculating the 'resistance' or 'current', and thus to identify ecological corridors and key ecological nodes. The results showed that, ecological security patterns included 66 ecological sources, 186 ecological corridors, 24 pinch-points and 10 barriers. In details, the ecological sources were mainly distributed in the southwest and northwest of Yunnan Province, with the ecological corridors locating along the high mountains, and both ecological sources and corridors were mostly covered with forest land. Pinch-points covered by forest land and cultivated land, were distributed in the middle of Yunnan Province along the rivers. Approximately 75.9% nature reserves were located in the identified ecological sources, and the remainings were mainly distributed in eastern Yunnan Province with small area, showing the effectiveness in identifying ecological security patterns. Among 81 projects of low-slope hill development carried out in Yunnan Province, 46.9% showed potential human stress on regional ecological security. Based on ecosystem services and circuit theory, this study provides a new approach to identifying the spatial range of ecological corridors and the specific location of key nodes for effective ecological conservation and restoration.

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Landscape ecological risk assessment can effectively identify key elements for landscape sustainability, which directly improves human wellbeing. However, previous research has tended to apply risk probability, measured by overlaying landscape metrics to evaluate risk, generally lacking a quantitative assessment of loss and uncertainty of risk. This study, taking Liaoyuan City as a case area, explores landscape ecological risk assessment associated with mining cities, based on probability of risk and potential ecological loss. The assessment results show landscape ecological risk is lower in highly urbanized areas than those rural areas, suggesting that not only cities but also natural and semi-natural areas contribute to overall landscape-scale ecological risk. Our comparison of potential ecological risk in 58 watersheds in the region shows that ecological loss are moderate or high in the 10 high-risk watersheds. The 35 moderate-risk watersheds contain a large proportion of farmland, and the 13 low-risk watersheds are mainly distributed in flat terrain areas. Our uncertainty analyses result in a close range between simulated and calculated values, suggesting that our model is generally applicable. Our analysis has good potential in the fields of resource development, landscape planning and ecological restoration, and provides a quantitative method for achieving landscape sustainability in a mining city. OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 8313