关键词: 生态安全格局, 生态源地, 生态廊道, 阻力面, 研究进展与展望

Abstract:

In recent years, due to the continuous urbanization, natural ecosystems are under enormous pressure, even resulting in ecological catastrophes. Moreover, with the start of the New Urbanization and Ecological Civilization Construction work in China, the demand for improvement of ecosystem services to promote human well-being is increasing. Hence, there is an intensifying contradiction between economic development and ecological protection. Ecological security patterns (ESPs) as a bridge linking ecosystem services and human society, has become one of the effective ways of constructing the protective barriers for terrestrial ecosystems. The ESPs construction directly affects the balance between social development and ecological conservation, and thus it has become the key to solving ecological problems and improving human well-being. To improve and enrich the theory of ESPs, we systematically combed the similarities and differences in the connotation of ESPs and other four main relevant concepts, namely urban growth boundary (UGB), ecological networks (EN), green infrastructure (GI), and ecological control lines (ECL). Furthermore, a research paradigm of regional ESPs construction was proposed based on literature review. According to this paradigm, research progresses on four main aspects were summarized systematically. These four aspects were research hotspots, ecological sources identification, ecological resistance surface setting, and practical application. Then the main deficiencies were indicated and summarized as follows: (1) The research objects selected in previous studies were mainly concentrated in the province, city and county levels, and were more confined to a specific administrative region, lacking larger-scale researches across administrative boundaries. (2) The selection of ecological index was mostly based on the intrinsic characteristics of ecological patches, less considering its relationship with surrounding objects and its status and functions in the whole pattern. And many studies ignored the coupling of human ecological demand and ecological processes. (3) The ecological resistance surface was assigned mainly based on land-use type, which covered up the difference between the internal space of the same land use type. The amended case studies based on impervious surface area and nighttime light were still insufficient to reveal the real situation. (4) Most of the provided policy recommendations for the protection and management of ESPs were broad and lack of the effective real-time monitoring and comparison to ecological security pattern. Based on the main disadvantage of regional ESPs construction in the current researches, we put forward four main directions for future research: setting important thresholds, evaluating the effectiveness of ESPs, constructing ESPs across multi-scales, and coupling the ESPs with ecological processes.

Key words: ecological security patterns, ecological source, ecological corridor, resistance surface, research progress and prospect