Balancing Urban Expansion and Ecological Connectivity through Ecological Network Optimization—A Case Study of ChangSha County

Shaobo Liu, Yiting Xia, Yifeng Ji, Wenbo Lai, Jiang Li (), Yicheng Yin (), Jialing Qi, Yating Chang and Hao Sun
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Shaobo Liu: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Yiting Xia: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Yifeng Ji: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Wenbo Lai: School of Architecture, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China
Jiang Li: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Yicheng Yin: School of Architecture and Planning, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Jialing Qi: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Yating Chang: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
Hao Sun: School of Architecture and Art, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-21

Abstract: The counties have experienced urban expansion and landscape pattern fragmentation. As carriers of new urbanization, the balanced development between urban expansion and landscape connectivity in the counties needs to be emphasized. The uncontrolled expansion of land should be discouraged and planners need to clarify land use expansion patterns. Using Changsha County as the study area, the characteristics of the landscape pattern between 2000 and 2020 were analyzed. The morphological spatial pattern analysis and landscape connectivity method (CMSPACI), as well as the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model, was used to construct the ecological network. We also explored the most appropriate corridor width using the buffer zone to guide future land use planning and ecological network planning. The results show that based on CMSPACI the total area of ecological sources identified was 304.91 km 2 , encompassing a large area of forest parks. The total length of the 25 ecological corridors identified by the MCR model was 431.97 km. Ecological sources and corridors are missing in the central region; so, their pattern was optimized using landscape connectivity and the absence of location as selection criteria. The optimized network indices showed significant improvement. The width of the ecological corridors should be controlled in order to be in the range of 30 m to 50 m to maximize the effect of the corridors on species dispersal and migration. Our proposed research framework for the construction and optimization of EN in Changsha County can provide ideas to balance the contradictions between urban expansion and landscape connectivity in Changsha County.

Keywords: ecological network; CMSPACI; ecological corridor width; SPCA; county (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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