Exploring the regional differences of ecosystem health and its spatial relationships with urban forms in China

A deeper understanding of the regional differences and driving factors behind ecosystem health (EH) is of vital for ecosystem management and restoration. Although a considerable number of studies have focused on this topic, few studies have explored the spatial relationship and scale effect between urban forms and EH from the perspective of urban scale, agglomeration and irregularity. Therefore, this study first constructed an improved evaluation framework by integrating vigor, organization, resilience and ecosystem services supply-demand ratio to measure the EH level in China at the county scale during 1995-2015, and then evaluated and compared the spatial relationships between five urban form metrics and EH based on the spatial regression model at the national, regional, urban agglomeration and city scales. The results showed that the level of EH in China spatially decreased from the southeast to the northwest, and displaying significant spatial agglomeration. At the national scale, the fragmentation and complexity of urban form exerted the greater negative influence on EH than urban expansion scale. At the regional scale, controlling urban expansion scale and enhancing landscape connectivity were conducive to the improving of EH in the central and eastern regions. At the urban agglomeration scale, the regularity and compactness of urban form played a key role in the sustainable development of regional and national urban agglomerations. At the city scale, large cities can improve environmental quality by limiting the size of core patches and reducing the complexity of urban shape. This paper can provide a scientific guidance for ecosystem protection and urban high-quality development.