Land-use pattern optimization under the scenario of construction land with unchanged total amount in Su-Xi-Chang area, China: A perspective of the little egret habitat network conservation

Background/Question/Methods

It is important to study land-use pattern optimization for solving problems of biodiversity conservation and land resources sustainable utility from the perspective of ecological process, especially for the Chinese context of rapid urbanization and “construction land reduction in New Normal”. In this paper, the Su-Xi-Chang region and the little egret were selected as study case and target species, respectively. Based on the background of “construction land with unchanged total amount” and the little egret habitat network conservation, a combined approach was designed as the follow four steps: (a) identify the plots of construction land-use type which located in the 200-meter-width migration corridors of the little egret, and then being transferred into plots in arbor forest land-use type (named construction land moving-out plots); (b) identify the suitable areas of other land-use types which are neighboring construction land and possible being transferred as construction land classified by priority rankings (named construction land moving-in plots); (c) according to the priority rankings of moving-in plots and administrative boundaries three scenarios of the spatial distributions of moving-out plots were designed which were Scenario 1, 2 and 3 representing moving-in and -out within county, an entire study area and municipal level, respectively; and (d) assess the optimized results using selected 11 landscape pattern indicators.

Results/Conclusions

The results show that: 1) the designed three scenarios of land-use pattern optimization have reached the goals of the little egret habitat network conservation and network connectivity quality improvement. The spatial layouts of construction land of three scenarios became more compact, compared with those of their current status. 2) the sum size of construction land moving-out plots of the whole area, Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou are 1751.15 ha, 1422.34 ha, 247.17 ha and 81.65 ha, respectively. Compared with other two scenarios, the sum size of construction land moving-in plots, aggregation index value of construction land and newly added value of total construction land of Scenario 2 are biggest; while that of fragmentation index of arbor forest is smallest. The above indicates that Scenario 2 has obtained a better balance between economic growth and biodiversity conservation and is recommended.