Construction and optimization of ecological security pattern in the mainstream of the Tarim River Basin, China 后印本

摘要: Scientifically constructing an ecological security pattern (ESP) is an important spatial analysis approach to improve ecological functions in arid areas and achieve sustainable development. However, previous research methods ignored the complex trade-offs between ecosystem services in the process of constructing ESP. Taking the mainstream of the Tarim River Basin (MTRB), China as the study area, this study set seven risk scenarios by applying Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) model to trade-off the importance of the four ecosystem services adopted by this study (water conservation, carbon storage, habitat quality, and biodiversity conservation), thereby identifying priority protection areas for ecosystem services. And then, this study identified ecological sources by integrating ecosystem service importance with eco-environmental sensitivity. Using circuit theory, the ecological corridors and nodes were extracted to construct the ESP. The results revealed significant spatial heterogeneity in the four ecosystem services across the study area, primarily driven by hydrological gradients and human activity intensity. The ESP of the MTRB included 34 ecological sources with a total area of 1471.38 km², 66 ecological corridors with a length of about 1597.45 km, 11 ecological pinch points, and 13 ecological barrier points distributed on the ecological corridors. The spatial differentiation of the ESP was obvious, with the upper and middle reaches of the MTRB having a large number of ecological sources and exhibiting higher clustering of ecological corridors compared with the lower reaches. The upper and middle reaches require ecological protection to sustain the existing ecosystem, while the lower reaches need to carry out ecological restoration measures including desertification control. Overall, this study makes up for the shortcomings of constructing ESP simply by spatial superposition of ecosystem service functions and can effectively improve the robustness and stability of ESP construction.