Ecological Risk Assessment of Guangxi Xijiang River Basin based on Landscape Pattern

Y. Yan, S. N. Shi, B. Q. Hu, K.S. Yang

Ekoloji, 2018, Issue 105, Pages: 5-16, Article No: e105002

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Abstract

As the emerging national strategy, the Xijiang river basin is facing stress from the accelerated and intensified exploitation, and resulted in environment deterioration and ecological risks. So, it is urgent to conduct the risk assessment of the river basin to balance the economic development and environmental protection. The ecological risk assessment was carried out at landscape level by applying the ecological risk model developed from landscape indices and land use data (1990s, 2000s, and 2010s). The ecological risk model was proposed based on landscape hemeroby index and landscape vulnerability index. Then, the exponential model was used to perform the kriging interpolation. The results indicated that: 1) The ecological risk of the study area presented deteriorative trend since the LERI value was stable from 1990s to 2000s, yet increased markedly in 2010s. 2) The dominate factor for the spatial variation of the ecological risk in the study area was non-structural stochastic factors in small scale rather than the structural factors in large scale. The high and very high risk level was mainly distributed in the northern, northwestern and eastern part of the basin and the very low and low risk level spread in the center of the study area. 3) The ecological risk presented deteriorated tendency from 1990s to 2010s, with the very high risk level reached up to 32.55% and the high risk level 25.37% in 2010s. The very high ecological risk for the six land use types all increased in the course of the study period and the area proportion for very low and low level ecological risk all declined without exception.

Keywords

spatial analysis, landscape metrics, risk transformation, spatial and temporal change

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