Evaluation Of Ecological Vulnerability In Shennongjia Forest Region Based On SRP-AHP Model

Shennongjia forest region is a famous area with excellent ecological environment in China.It has always been considered as an ecological stable area on account of its forest coverage rate of more than 92%.However,in recent years,with the continuous development of social economy and the acceleration of urban expansion,ecological problems gradually appear under the conjoint influence of natural environment and anthropogenic activities.Therefore,it is urgent to evaluate the ecological vulnerability of Shennongjia forest region in order to guarantee the local ecological environment protection and sustainable development.In this study,based on the local natural environment and social economic characteristics,42 sampling points of the main rivers in Shennongjia forest region were investigated from September to October 2020.What’s more,combined with remote sensing data and geographic information data,the SRP-AHP model was applied to select 16 evaluation indicators from the three aspects of ecological sensitivity,ecological resilience and ecological pressure,and an ecological vulnerability evaluation system was established.The ecological vulnerability of Shennongjia forest region in 2020 was quantitatively evaluated through Arc GIS,ENVI and other platforms.At the same time,Shennongjia forest area was divided into 9 small watersheds by Arc SWAT tool,and the spatial distribution of ecological vulnerability was analyzed from the perspective of small watersheds.The corresponding ecological environment governance and restoration measures were proposed in line with the evaluation results.The main conclusions were as follows:(1)According to the ecological vulnerability index of different regions,the ecological vulnerability was divided into five levels: non vulnerable,slightly vulnerable,mildly vulnerable,moderately vulnerable and severely vulnerable level.The average ecological vulnerability index of Shennongjia forest area is 0.234 on the whole,which belongs to slightly vulnerability.The areas of non vulnerable,slightly vulnerable,mildly vulnerable,moderately vulnerable and severely vulnerable accounted for 40.70%,52.37%,6.33%,0.57%and 0.02% of the total area of the study area,respectively.(2)In terms of spatial distribution,the ecological vulnerability of Shennongjia forest area is increasing by degrees from west to east.The moderately vulnerable and severely vulnerable areas are mainly distributed along the highway and the residential areas,which accounted for the ecological pressure caused by human activities.The development of tourism and transportation had damaged the regional ecological environment,resulting in the decline of local aquatic biodiversity,the destruction of forest land and the reduction of ecological resilience,which had a significant impact on the local ecological environment.(3)The ecological vulnerability of nine small watersheds in Shennongjia forest area was classified based on the value of average ecological vulnerability.There were 3 non vulnerable watersheds,5 slightly vulnerable watersheds and 1 mildly vulnerable watershed.Among them,the Longkou river basin had the highest ecological vulnerability.The average value of the ecological vulnerability index is 0.412.The moderately vulnerable and severely vulnerable areas accounted for 8.58% and 0.73% of the total area of the basin respectively,accounting for 46.62% and 91.80% of the total area of the Shennongjia forest region;The Luoyang river basin had the lowest ecological vulnerability.The average ecological vulnerability index was 0.138,and 35.63% of the forest areas were concentrated in this basin.(4)The spatial distribution characteristics of ecological vulnerability in Shennongjia forest region were closely related to altitude and land use types.From the perspective of altitude,the ecological environment in the low altitude area was the most vulnerable,which took up 24.11% of the area by the type of the mildly,moderately and severely vulnerable areas.the ecological environment in the high altitude area was the least vulnerable,which took up 98.59% of the area by the type of the non and slightly vulnerable areas;From the perspective of land use types,the grassland ecosystem had the lowest degree of ecological environment vulnerability.The non vulnerable and slightly vulnerable areas took up 98.44%of the total grassland area.About 59.03% of the moderately vulnerable areas and 99.49%of the severely vulnerable areas in the study area were distributed in the construction land,which showed high vlunerability of construction land.(5)Based on the evaluation results and the actual situation of Shennongjia forest region,the methods of protecting the local ecological environment and biodiversity were proposed from three aspects of ecological sensitivity,ecological resilience and ecological pressure.What’s more,the protection strategies of ecological environment in Shennongjia forest region were proposed.It could be summarized as the natural recovery of low vulnerable areas,the protection and supervision of medium vulnerable areas,and the comprehensive management of high vulnerable areas,which provided theoretical support for the ecological environment protection strategy of Shennongjia forest region.In general,the overall ecological environment of Shennongjia forest region in 2020 was good,and the ecological vulnerability kept a low level.On the other hand,there was a risk of increasing ecological vulnerability in local areas and river basins.We should pay more attention to environmental protection,strengthen supervision and governance,build an ecological security barrier in order to maintain the good ecological environment of Shennongjia forest region and promote the harmonious coexistence between human and nature.