Construction of urban and rural ecological network in Yanqing District of Beijing based on MSPA model

  Objective  With the rapid development of Beijing’s urbanization, Beijing’s ecological environment tends to deteriorate and urban ecological security faces enormous challenges. The construction of ecological network can mitigate the damage caused by the rapid urbanization and the fragmentation of urban and rural landscapes and is of great significance for the protection of urban biodiversity.

  Method  This paper selects Yanqing District of Beijing as the research area. Based on the ArcGIS software platform, the remote sensing image of Yanqing District of Beijing was interpreted to obtain the land cover type. The land cover type was divided into foreground and background by the ArcGIS. The analysis method (MSPA) obtained seven types of landscape types and identified the core area as an important ecological source. The accumulative cost distance model and the network analysis were used to obtain the ecological network under the best threshold. Based on this, the ecological network optimization proposal of Yanqing District was proposed.

  Result  (1) The overall fragmentation degree in Yanqing District was low, the material and energy migration among different types were relatively smooth and the overall landscape diversity was higher, but the number of habitat patches in the city was less and the corridor was scarce; (2) the distance threshold, which was most suitable for the current structure of the ecological network in Yanqing District was 20 000 m and the network closure degree α was 0.73; (3) woodland and cultivated land were important landscape types of potential ecological corridors in the study area and forest area was the largest, it was 17 452.9 ha, accounting for 81.1% of the total corridor area.

  Conclusion  The MSPA method has the advantages of accurate and detailed evaluation of geometric connectivity, small amount of data required and visualization of analysis results. The network analysis method could optimize the ecological network. Therefore, based on the MSPA method and network analysis method, the accuracy of the ecological network construction in Yanqing District is more detailed and accurate. The research results have important guiding and practical value for the construction of ecological network and biodiversity protection in Yanqing District. The ecological network construction in Yanqing District could provide a reference for the other areas.