Ecological Environment Vulnerability Assessment In Eastern Fujian Province

Fujian is located in the southeast coast of China with pleasant weather,abundant rainfall and diverse forest resource.It is also an important ecological barrier of southern China.The coastal areas in Fujian play crucial role in the economic development of Fujian.However,with the rapid socio-economic development,a large number of population migrated from inland areas to coastal areas in the past decades and many coastal infrastructure and industries have been built which resulted in a series ecological problems,such as:excessive energy consumption,vegetation damage,seawater pollution,backwater irrigation and so on.Furthermore,due to the special geographical location and weather conditions,natural disasters such as typhoons,floods and droughts are frequent and soil erosion is serious in this area which leads to a very fragile ecological environment.The dual influence of natural environment and human activities aggravates the damage on ecological environment of eastern coast region of Fujian.The natural environment is facing unprecedented pressure and challenges.Therefore,under the background of research on ecological environmental vulnerability and development strategy for land and sea areas,the study focus on the vulnerability of the ecological environment in the coastal areas of Fujian,evaluate the ecological environmental vulnerability,and strengthen the protection of the coastal zone and the ecological construction of Fujian.The study can provide guidance for the establishment of environmental ecological and early warning mechanism of environment protection in the climate transition.In view of this,this paper applied ecological sensitivity-ecological resilience-ecological pressure(SRP)model based on geographic information system(GIS)and remote sensing(RS)technologies to calculate the vulnerability indicators of ecological environment in the coastal areas of Fujian from 2000 to 2014.An evaluation model of spatial principal component analysis based on ecological sensitivity,ecological resilience,and ecological pressure was also established.Furthermore,the spatial-temporal distribution and change features of eco-environmental fragility in study region were discussed according to Hurst model.Lastly,the Geographic Weighted Regression Analysis Model(GWR),which has been widely used by scholars in recent years to reveal spatial correlation between variables,was applied to deeply explore the impact of driving factors on the eco-environmental vulnerability of Fujian coastal areas.The main findings are as follows:(1)Overall,the vulnerability of ecological environment in coastal areas of Fujian showed a downward trend from 2000 to 2014.Vulnerability was generally in the mid-fragile and severely fragile levels.The highest and lowest values of ecological environment vulnerability occurred in 2004 and 2008 respectively.(2)From 2000 to 2014,the spatial distribution of eco-environmental fragility in the coastal areas of Fujian Province was characterized by the pattern of "High in East" and "Low in West".The mean value range of eco-environmental vulnerability was:5.377-6.404.The descending order of environmental fragility level is:Xiamen City>Quanzhou City>Luzhou City>Fuzhou City>Putian City>Ningde City.(3)The rules of migration and change of ecological fragility in the coastal areas of Fujian are apparent,and the direction of centroids continues to migrate from northeast to southwest.In addition,the ecological fragility of the high-vulnerable eco-environmental areas in the coastal areas increased significantly from 2000 to 2014,the ecological fragility of the low-vulnerable areas weakened significantly,and the ecologically fragile area of the moderately fragile areas did not change significantly.(4)The change trend of the ecologically fragile environment in the coastal areas of Fujian will be in line with changes in the past 15 years,and the overall vulnerability of ecological environment will increase.In particular,ecological fragility in high-vulnerable areas will continue to increase significantly.(5)The fitting results of the GWR model show that the ecological environmental vulnerability of coastal areas in Fujian is affected by both human activities and natural conditions,and the relationship between each factor and vulnerability has a strong spatial heterogeneity.Among them,elevation,slope,annual average temperature,annual average wind speed,annual average precipitation,vegetation coverage and other factors have a strong impact on regional ecological environmental vulnerability.