Can the establishment of ecological security patterns improve ecological protection? An example of Nanchang, China

Establishing ecological security patterns provides new ideas for maintaining regional ecological security. Methods for establishing these patterns have been extensively investigated in several studies, but the ecological protection effects of these patterns need further examination. Nanchang is the capital city of Jiangxi province and a typical representative of rapidly developing cities. With the proposal of an ecological environment protection plan for Nanchang metropolitan area, the coordinated development of ecology, economy and society has become the local development goal. This study used Nanchang City as an example for the establishment of an ecological security pattern through the circuit theory. The ecological sources of a 1068.56 km² location and 20 ecological corridors with a total area of 957.39 km² were identified. Three development scenarios in 2015-2040 were set up, namely, unrestricted development (UD), core area protection (CP) and ecological security pattern restriction (ESPR) scenarios. The UD scenario followed the land expansion rate from 2010 to 2015. The CP scenario used a nature reserve as a forbidden conversion area. Under the ESPR scenario, ecological security pattern was regarded as a prohibited conversion area. The CLUMondo model was used in simulating land use and evaluating the ecological protection effects of the scenarios. Through comparison, we determined that the ecological security indices under UD, CP and ESPR were 0.230, 0.242 and 0.249, respectively, from the perspective of the overall ecological security of the region. In the evaluation of the landscape characteristics of EL, under ESPR, the landscape connectivity was the best. The detailed analysis results showed that the ecological security pattern not only could protect the regional ecological security on the regional scale but also had an outstanding protection effect on the local scale. In summary, compared with the UD and CP scenarios, ecological security patterns had a better effect on regional ecological protection.