Identifying priority areas for conservation in the lower Yellow River basin from an ecological network perspective

Figures & data

Figure 1. Location and elevation of the study area.

Figure 2. The research framework of this paper.

Table 1. The weights and maximum influence distances of threat sources.

Threats	Maximum influencedistance (km)	Weight	Decay type
Urban land	10	1	Exponential
Rural land	8	0.8	Exponential
Traffic land	9	0.9	Exponential
Cultivated land	6	0.6	Linear
Unutilized land	4	0.4	Linear

Table 2. Sensitivity of different habitats types to different threat factors.

Habitat type	Habitat suitability	Urban land	Rural land	Traffic land	Cultivated land	Unutilized land
Cultivated land	0.3	0.8	0.6	0.7	0	0.4
Forestland	1.0	0.8	0.7	0.7	0.6	0.2
Grassland	0.9	0.7	0.6	0.7	0.4	0.4
Water	0.8	0.7	0.6	0.7	0.4	0.4
Construction land	0	0	0	0	0	0
Unutilized land	0.5	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0

Figure 3. Results of MSPA and habitat quality evaluation. (a) MSPA results; (b) habitat quality evaluation results.

Figure 4. Spatial distribution of ecological sources and ecological resistance surfaces.

Figure 5. Regional ecological network. (a) Before optimization, (b) after optimization.

Figure 6. Distribution of priority areas for protection and restoration.

To avoid confusion caused by too many colors, the planning sources are integrated into the ecological sources (same below)

Figure 7. Comparison of MSPA results under different edge effects.

Figure 8. Variation in the ecological corridor range and cumulative current at thresholds of 1000–9000.