GRID-SCALE EXPLORATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL HEALTH AND HUMAN PRESSURE IN THE THREE GORGES RESERVOIR REGION

Human activity is becoming the key factor influencing ecological health changes and clarifying the nature of that influence could effectively promote regional ecological restoration.Commonly used human-related factors (e.g., social and economic census data) can only be constrained at the administrative division, and they lead to a loss of detailed spatial characteristics.In this study, we applied human activity intensity (HAI), mapped at the grid scale, to represent pressures of human activity on the ecosystem.Taking the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR) as the study area, the spatial heterogeneity of the influences of human pressure on ecological health was analyzed.The results showed that, in the TGRR from 2000 to 2018, there was an overall improvement of ecological health and a significant spatial reorganization of HAI.The impact of HAI on ecological health had significant spatial heterogeneity.In areas where HAI had decreased, ecological health was prone to improve significantly.In contrast, in areas where HAI had increased, ecological health tended to become worse, and only when the increase of HAI exceeded 0.08 would that tendency be significant.Compared to urban areas, HAI change had even broader impacts on ecological health in remote mountain areas, where a more remarkable restoration of the ecosystem was experienced.