Hubei Key Laboratory of Regional Ecology and Environmental Change, School of Geography and Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China; Key Laboratory of National Geographical Census and Monitoring, Ministry of Natural Resources, Wuhan, 430072, China; Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
Hubei Key Laboratory of Regional Ecology and Environmental Change, School of Geography and Information Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Jul;364:121371. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.121371. Epub 2024 Jun 15.
Rapid urbanization and high-intensity socio-economic activities in China have caused severe ecological problems. Implementing ecological restoration in China has become an inevitable way to restore the ecosystem. Ecosystem health is crucial for evaluating ecological conditions and trends, but comprehensive national studies that use quantitative ecosystem health assessments to guide specific ecological restoration are lacking. This study constructs the Vigor-Organization-Resilience-Services (VORS) model to evaluate the ecosystem health level of China during 2000-2020. Then, through the natural breakpoint and intelligent clustering correction, we carried out the ecological restoration zoning and proposed corresponding measures. The results show that China's overall ecosystem health declined from 2000 to 2020, and ecological restoration is imminent. The spatial pattern of ecosystem health is generally favorable in the south and usually poor in the north. China protects poor ecosystems' health well but needs more for better ones. To combat this degradation, we propose a zoning strategy that classifies the landscape into five categories: Ecosystem Conservation Areas (3.47%), focusing on biodiversity preservation; Ecosystem Enhancement Areas (10.53%), aiming at increasing ecological resilience; Ecosystem Buffer Zones (23.04%), intending to mitigate human impacts; Ecosystem Correction Zones (33.79%), targeting at restoring degraded ecosystems; and Ecosystem Reshaping Zones (29.17%), designing to revitalize ecological functions. The ecological restoration zoning in China proposed in this study, combined with appropriate and practical restoration tools, will help mitigate ecological problems and improve stability and ecosystem health.
中国快速的城市化和高强度的社会经济活动导致了严重的生态问题。在中国实施生态恢复已成为恢复生态系统的必然途径。生态系统健康对于评估生态状况和趋势至关重要，但缺乏使用定量生态系统健康评估来指导具体生态恢复的全面国家研究。本研究构建了活力-组织-弹性-服务（VORS）模型，以评估 2000-2020 年期间中国的生态系统健康水平。然后，通过自然断点和智能聚类校正，我们进行了生态恢复分区，并提出了相应的措施。结果表明，中国的整体生态系统健康状况从 2000 年到 2020 年下降，生态恢复迫在眉睫。生态系统健康的空间格局总体上南方较好，北方较差。中国很好地保护了较差生态系统的健康，但更好的生态系统需要更多的保护。为了应对这种退化，我们提出了一种分区策略，将景观分为五类：生态保护区域（3.47%），专注于生物多样性保护；生态增强区域（10.53%），旨在增加生态弹性；生态缓冲区域（23.04%），旨在减轻人类影响；生态纠正区域（33.79%），旨在恢复退化的生态系统；以及生态重塑区域（29.17%），旨在恢复生态功能。本研究提出的中国生态恢复分区，结合适当和实用的恢复工具，将有助于缓解生态问题，提高稳定性和生态系统健康。
