Research On The Integration And Optimization Of Assessment Framework For Priority Areas In Territorial Ecological Restoration Planning

Unplanned exploitation and excessive utilization of natural resources by humans have exacerbated the imbalance of regional ecosystems,posing a serious threat to national territorial ecological security.To optimize the natural resource endowment of the country and improve regional ecological conditions,China has launched an important planning strategy represented by the Ecological Restoration Planning of National Territorial Space.The restoration priority areas,as a key guarantee for the implementation of the plan,have significant practical significance in accurately assessing the areas that require priority restoration.However,since the current official guidelines only provide preliminary assessment ideas,various research methods exist in practical priority area evaluation,and the evaluation results corresponding to different methods cannot completely overlap.This situation has prevented Territorial Ecological Restoration Planning from further implementing existing priority area evaluation results.Therefore,the integration of multiple methods and optimization of the existing evaluation framework for priority areas in Territorial Ecological Restoration Planning has become a key scientific issue that needs to be addressed urgently.Given the existence of various types of evaluation methods in the current priority area restoration assessment and the lack of scholars systematically summarizing and comparing relevant research methods,this study intends to combine systematic reviews to review the theoretical methods and basic evaluation processes in the field of restoration space priority research,integrate and summarize the evaluation framework,and use the priority area evaluation results of Territorial Ecological Restoration Planning in Xi’an as a comparative object to analyze the differences and reasons between the integrated and optimized priority area evaluation plan and the existing plan.Furthermore,this study aims to provide optimization suggestions for the priority area evaluation process in Territorial Ecological Restoration Planning.Based on the main idea of "defining research problems-constructing problem strategies-verifying strategy effectiveness",this study focuses on the following key scientific questions: 1)To distinguish the basic connotations of the two key concepts of "ecological restoration" and "priority regions," summarizes and unify the understanding of multiple scholars in the field,and define the theoretical and practical response domain corresponding to the research problem(corresponding to the first part of Chapter 2).2)To conduct a systematic review of the field and integrate and summarize the evaluation framework.The literature review will review various theoretical methods in domestic and foreign research(corresponding to the second part of Chapter 2),and the practical case review will analyze the basic processes of four typical practical contexts(corresponding to Chapter 3).Finally,the theoretical framework and technical framework suitable for multi-situation priority region evaluation will be integrated into "objectives-criteria-indicators"(corresponding to Chapter 4).3)To explore the application effectiveness of the integrated and optimized framework in the practice of priority region evaluation in the national spatial ecological restoration planning and its advantages over existing planning schemes(corresponding to Chapter 5).Based on the integrated and optimized framework,this study sets the research plan,uses key technical models such as In VEST and Linkage Mapper to evaluate the priority restoration region,and horizontally compares the priority region evaluation results of the Xi’an City National Land Space Ecological Restoration Plan(2022 edition).The differences in evaluation objectives,processes,and results of the two types of schemes will be analyzed,and optimization suggestions will be proposed.This study aimed to address the key scientific question of how to prioritize ecological restoration efforts in a given area.The research approach followed a three-step process of defining research questions,developing problem-solving strategies,and evaluating their effectiveness.Specifically,the study aimed to:(1)This study outlines the development of spatial priority assessment in ecological restoration and summarizes eleven classic theoretical evaluation criteria.Since 1967,the development of spatial priority assessment in ecological restoration has progressed from single-factor and dual-factor analysis to multi-factor analysis,forming eleven classic theoretical evaluation criteria,such as adequacy,representativeness,and irreplaceability.(2)this study is the integration of multiple methods to construct a theoretical framework and technical route for assessing priority areas for ecological restoration.This was achieved by integrating and summarizing the key theoretical objectives of "importance-urgency-feasibility" into an assessment framework.Based on four typical application contexts,a basic assessment process was summarized and refined to ultimately develop the "minimum cost" and "maximum benefit" framework for assessing priority areas for restoration.(3)In this study,we compared and optimized the existing evaluation framework of the national ecological restoration planning for priority areas based on three dimensions of evaluation objectives,evaluation process,and evaluation results.Our results indicate that the original planning scheme focused more on high restoration costs and space within the basic farmland protection line.Therefore,the optimized evaluation framework,which integrates the feasibility objective,can provide improvement ideas for prioritizing restoration areas in the national ecological restoration planning.