Provincial-Scale Research on the Eco-Security Structure in the Form of an Ecological Network of the Upper Yellow River: A Case Study of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

Abstract

Important for promoting the integrated protection and systematic management of mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, grasslands, and sandy areas, ecological networks form the backbone of the regional ecological security pattern. An improved morphological spatial pattern analysis coupled with a minimum cumulative resistance model (MSPA–MCR) based on multi-source data was used to study, on a provincial scale, the ecological security pattern of Ningxia, an ecologically fragile region in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China. The results show the following: (1) A reasonable classification of ecological sources and ecological corridors is key to constructing hierarchical ecological networks. Classifying ecological sources by replacing patch areas with energy factors and identifying the importance of ecological corridors by modifying the gravity model with the energy factors proposed in this paper could improve the rationality of the hierarchical structure division of ecological networks. (2) Grassland as the substrate vegetation type is an important ecological source type in arid and semi-arid ecologically fragile areas, and forests and lake wetlands are the main ecological source types in mountainous areas and oasis areas, respectively. The study area was located in the arid–semi-arid transitional area, with a variety of ecological types, such as mountain, oasis, and desert. Therefore, the complex ecological source types of forest–grassland–wetland appear in some areas. (3) There are 45 ecological patch groups that can be classified as ecological sources in Ningxia, including 10 primary source groups. The number of primary source groups is small, and their spatial distribution is unbalanced. There are two categories of ecological corridors, the river corridor and the mountain corridor, and the network connectivity is poor. (4) The ecological network structure of Ningxia is presented as an ecological security structure consisting of one belt, three screens, three corridors, and five clusters, forming a hierarchical nested ecological network security structure system.

Research on the Construction of a Composite Humanistic Forest Ecological Corridor in the Main Urban Area of Daqing City

“…Central to this process is the competitive diffusion from the source across adjacent spatial units within a resistance surface system. This approach effectively captures the dynamics of material and energy movement within a landscape, facilitating a deeper understanding of interactions among various patches [29,30]. The governing equation of the MCR model is presented below:…”

Study on the Spatiotemporal Evolution of the Ecological Landscape and Construction of an Ecological Network: A Case Study of Hebei Province

“…MSPA is based on the principles of computer imaging and uses mathematical methods for recognition and segment grids at the pixel level, completing landscape patch calculations [17]. In this study, GuidosToolbox3.0 software was used to conduct MSPA on the binarization data of land use types in Hebei Province in 2020.…”

“…At present, the model of "ecological sources-ecological corridors-ecological nodes" is adopted to construct the ecological network [16]. There are different opinions on the ways to identify ecological source areas and ecological corridors [17]. The methods of selecting ecological source areas include identifying the land use types of key areas [18][19][20] and selecting source areas by using a landscape pattern index [21,22].…”

“…The minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model is used to calculate the ecological species from source to the destination cost price model [26,27]. In general, the method of using MSPA to measure landscape structure and MCR to extract the ecological corridor is more widely used [17]. Hu et al [28] comprehensively evaluated the ecological network space of Wuhan City with an MSPA-MCR model and quantitatively analyzed the importance of ecological corridor protection by combining the gravity model.…”

Identifying Ecological Security Patterns Considering the Stability of Ecological Sources in Ecologically Fragile Areas

“…Ecological sources are the origin of species diffusion and the flow of ecological functions, and they can provide high-level ecosystem services [4]. Beyond the direct designation of nature reserves, large-scale habitat patches, water bodies, and forests as ecological sources [17][18][19][20], the identification of ecological sources through a comprehensive evaluation using multiple indicators, such as ecosystem importance, ecological sensitivity, and landscape connectivity, has been widely used with the ongoing attention to ecological processes and functions [14,18,21]. The construction of an ecological resistance surface is the foundation for accurately extracting ecological corridors.…”