Landscape ecological risk assessment in Weibei dryland region of Shaanxi Province based on LUCC

This study constructed a landscape ecological risk evaluation model based on land use/land cover change and evaluates the ecological risk status of the Weibei dryland region from 1980 to 2018. The results showed that: With the rapid expansion of towns and cities and the growth of land development and utilization intensity, different land use types have changed to different degrees, among which, arable land decreased the most, with a total decrease of 636.36km2, while construction land increased the most, with a total increase of 496.17km2. Influenced by factors such as population growth and the implementation of the policy of returning farmland to forest and grass, a total of 3492.40km2 of land in the Weibei dryland region was converted, with a change ratio of 8.80%. The advantage of transfer between farmland, forest land, grass and construction land was most obvious, with a conversion area of 3177.22km2, accounting for 90.98% of the total transformed area. During the study period, the proportion of low and medium-low risk areas decreased from 20.23% to 19.01%, the proportion of medium-risk areas increased from 41.62% to 43.23%, and the proportion of medium-high and high-risk areas decreased from 38.15% to 37.77%, with an overall high ecological risk level, showing the distribution characteristics of low around, high in the middle. In addition, the mean value of ecological risk in the study area shows a fluctuating trend of increasing and then decreasing, and the overall ecological safety has improved, but the quality of ecological environment in some areas has decreased. The global Moran's I index of the landscape ecological risk values of the five time nodes in the study area were all higher than 0.55, indicating a spatially significant positive correlation of ecological risk values. The high-high concentration areas are mainly located in the medium-high and high-risk areas, where the ecological environment has been more seriously damaged due to large-scale disturbance by human activities. © 2022, Editorial Board of China Environmental Science. All right reserved.