Identifying ecological strategic points based on multi-functional ecological networks: A case study of Changzhi City, China

Building ecological networks with close connections and less disturbance is important for balancing regional development and ecological protection. The construction of traditional ecological networks focuses on the potential ecological corridors extracted based on the minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR), and less on other types of corridors. The extraction of ecological strategic points mainly prioritizes their characteristics in the weak areas of ecological corridors and is concentrated on a single ecological network. Taking the case of Changzhi, China, this study comprehensively considers biological, hydrological, and human processes to construct natural ecological networks (i.e., biological migration networks and hydro-ecological networks) and artificial networks by linking multi-source data and using spatial analysis tools, including the MARXAN, MCR, InVEST 3.6.0, and ArcGIS 10.2. A coupling analysis of natural ecological networks and artificial networks is used to extract the intersection areas between the elements of the natural ecological network as ecological key points, as well as the conflict areas between natural ecological and artificial networks as ecological disturbance points, revealing the distribution characteristics of ecological strategic points to propose corresponding recommendations. The results reveal that (1) the source area of multi-functional ecological networks is hydro-ecological sources > biological conservation sources > socioeconomic sources. The corridor length is artificial corridors > hydro-ecological corridors > biological migration corridors. (2) There were 567 ecological key points with an area of 1716.61 km2 to be protected, to promote the spatial connection of ecological elements. Additionally, 6.81% of the socioeconomic source area should be converted to natural ecological sources. The areas spanning 2.7 km2, 3.9 km2, and 1.76 km2 corresponding to the first-, second-, and third-level natural corridors in the socioeconomic sources should belong to natural corridors. (3) The proportions of the disturbed biological conservation source area and corridor length were 4.24% and 0.58%, respectively. The area of the disturbed hydro-ecological sources and length of the disturbed corridors accounted for 0.93% and 0.12%, respectively. There were 2266 ecological disturbance points with an area of 180.91 km2 that needed to be controlled by eliminating, weakening, and early warning. These results provide a reference for future ecological space delineations, and can be used to coordinate ecological protection and regional development.