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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.

Sec. Environmental Informatics and Remote Sensing

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1545221

This article is part of the Research Topic Advanced Geospatial Data Analytics for Environmental Sustainability: Current Practices and Future Prospects View all 4 articles

Assessing the Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Driving Factors of Habitat Quality in Sustainable Development Demonstration Zones: A Case Study of Guilin City, China

Provisionally accepted
Jingfeng Xu Jingfeng Xu Deqin Fan Deqin Fan *Fangzhen Wang Fangzhen Wang Xuesheng Zhao Xuesheng Zhao Wentao Ma Wentao Ma Jialing Duan Jialing Duan
  • China University of Mining and Technology - Beijing, Beijing, China

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

    Guilin City, located in a typical karst landform area in China, is one of the sustainable development demonstration zones. Evaluating the habitat quality of Guilin City and exploring its driving factors are helpful in formulating effective measures for sustainable development. Based on the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Servicesand Tradeoffs (InVEST) model and combined methods such as spatial autocorrelation analysis, Geographical detector model and Geographically weighted regression (GWR) model, this study evaluated the habitat quality of Guilin City from 2001 to 2022. The study also analyzed the spatiotemporal characteristics and their possible driving factors. The results indicate that: (1) The average habitat quality in Guilin City was 0.59, with 47.98% of the area classified as having good or excellent habitat quality; however, habitat quality has shown a downward trend over the past 22 years. (2) Moran's I values for habitat quality in Guilin City wereall greater than 0.8, indicating a significant positive spatial correlation and spatial clustering. Among these, the low-low aggregation regions were the largest, whereas the high-high aggregation regions showed the most significant decrease. (3) Elevation was the most significant factor affecting the spatial differentiation of habitat quality in Guilin. The interactions between various driving factors were stronger than those between any single factor, with most interactions exhibiting a dual-factor enhancement effect. This study highlights the complexity of the comprehensive impact of multiple factors on habitat quality changes and provides a scientific basis and policy recommendations for ecological protection within the national sustainable development agenda's innovative demonstration zones.

    Keywords: habitat quality, Spatiotemporal characteristics, Driving factors, Geographic detector, Guilin city

    Received: 14 Dec 2024; Accepted: 07 Apr 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Fan, Wang, Zhao, Ma and Duan. 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: Deqin Fan, China University of Mining and Technology - Beijing, 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.

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