Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2024.1406444
This article is part of the Research Topic Ecosystem Condition Assessments: Progress towards a Global Standard View all 3 articles

Ecological vulnerability assessment and spatial-temporal variations analysis in typical ecologically vulnerable areas of China

Provisionally accepted
Min Xu Min Xu 1Chunxiang Cao Chunxiang Cao 1*Shaobo Zhong Shaobo Zhong 2Xinwei Yang Xinwei Yang 1Barjeece Bashir Barjeece Bashir 1Kaiming Wang Kaiming Wang 1Heyi Guo Heyi Guo 1Xiaotong Gao Xiaotong Gao 1Jingbo Li Jingbo Li 1Yujie Yang Yujie Yang 1
  • 1 Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China
  • 2 Beijing Research Center of Urban Systems Engineering, Beijing Academy of Science and Technology, Beijing, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Ecological vulnerability assessment is crucial for environment protection, ecological restoration and resource utilization. However, many former studies have limitations in the indicator system of the assessment, which were not comparable for different types of ecologically vulnerable areas. It is difficult to apply directly to the ecological vulnerability assessment of different types and in various regions. Aiming to solve these problems, the study proposed a well-established and comprehensive indicator system for ecological vulnerability assessment and conducted ecological vulnerability assessment application of five types of typical ecologically vulnerable areas of China based on remote sensing, meteorological, geographic and other data. The results show that the average EVIs value of Zhangbei County ranging from 0.525 to 0.559 are the highest among the five research areas during the four periods, followed by Zoige region and Xiamen bay. However, the region with the lowest average EVI value varies. In 2005 and 2015, it was Taihe County, while in 2010 and 2020, it was the Sanjiangyuan region. The variation of average EVIs in the five typical areas presents slight fluctuation and remains generally stable from 2005 to 2020. It indicates that the environmental protection measures and projects undertaken by the Chinese government in recent years have had a striking effect, curbing the trend of ecological environment deterioration.

    Keywords: Ecologically vulnerable areas, Indicator system, Spatial-temporal variations, remote sensing, spatial analysis

    Received: 28 Mar 2024; Accepted: 26 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Xu, Cao, Zhong, Yang, Bashir, Wang, Guo, Gao, Li and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Chunxiang Cao, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.