Abstract:
Abstract: Complex ecological environment has posed increasing challenges to protect the ecosystem in recent years. In China, an environmental strategy has been initiated, called "ecological protection red lines", to balance economic growth and environmental protection. An important part is to construct an ecological security pattern suitable for different regional conditions during territorial spatial planning and ecological civilization construction. This paper aims to promote the scientific implementation project of the ecological security pattern, and the overall improvement of the ecological environment quality. Taking Qinglong County as the study area, an ecological security pattern was established based on the survey data of land-use change in 2009 and 2016, remote sensing images and multi-year meteorological data. Three important functions were selected, including water resources conservation, soil conservation and biodiversity protection in the study area. In order to evaluate the importance of ecosystem service functions, the comprehensive index evaluation method was used to analyze the ecological sensitivity. Therefore, the ecological protection red line was delineated based on two evaluation results of ecosystem service function and ecological sensitivity. The ecological sources were identified during Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA) and landscape connectivity assessment, while the ecological corridors were produced based on the Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model and minimum cost path method. An image recognition method was used to identify ecological nodes and break points in landscape ecology for the conditions of the study areas. Consequently, the ecological network was established by using ecological sources, ecological corridors, ecological nodes, and ecological break points. After superimposing the ecological protection red line and network, the protection elements of ecological security were extracted to describe the target areas, and thereby to formulate protection measures. A complete ecological security pattern was finally constructed for the research area. The results showed that the total area of the ecological protection red line was 443.94 km2, accounting for 12.7% of the county area. This pattern mainly distributed in the state-owned forest farm areas in the southeast and northwest, and along the river system strip in the central area. The ecological network consisted of 11 ecological sources, 18 ecological corridors, 22 ecological nodes, and 34 ecological break points. The ecological sources were mainly distributed in the east and northwest border areas of the county, and parts of the central regions. The total length of the 18 ecological corridors was 334.22 km. The ecological security pattern of the study area included the protection elements of ecological security, target areas for security protection, and protection measures of ecological security. The protection elements of ecological security were related to the ecological protection red line, ecological sources, ecological corridors, stepping stone plaques, and ecological fracture points. The target areas of ecological security protection consisted of red line protection areas, biological migration rest areas, and biological migration channel areas. The protection measures of ecological security were specifically made for the typical target areas of ecological security protection. The research results can provide technical support and scientific basis for the formulation of territorial spatial planning and the construction, thereby to realize ecological restoration and protection at county level.