Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 2, 2025

Watershed Planning within a Quantitative Scenario Analysis Framework
Published on: July 24, 2016
Ecological transformation is the key to improve ecosystem health for resource-exhausted cities: A case study in China
Simin Jiang1, Fei Feng1, Xinna Zhang1
1Research Centre of Urban Forestry, Key Laboratory for Silviculture and Forest Ecosystem of State Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China.
Abstract:
Numerous cities are currently grappling with the challenge of ecological transformation, especially those categorized as resource-exhausted cities. In these urban areas, land use change is a highly scrutinized issue, as different land use strategies can lead to varied outcomes, impacting the ecological environment in multiple dimensions. Assessing ecosystem health reflects the quality of the regional ecological environment and serves as a comprehensive indicator for evaluating the sustainability and stability of urban ecosystems. To this end, a multi-objective optimization model was constructed to predict land use changes under four future development scenarios (four ecological transformation modes), using Shizuishan City (China), a resource-exhausted city situated in an ecologically fragile area, as an example. The "vigor-organization-resilience" assessment framework was employed to evaluate the ecosystem health conditions in each scenario from three dimensions. The study results showed: (1) The ranking of the average ecological health levels in Shizuishan City for 2022 and different future development scenarios is as follows: Low-Carbon Economic Development Scenario (0.302) > Ecological-Economic Coordinated Development Scenario (0.291) > Baseline Scenario (0.290) > Economic Development Scenario (0.281) > 2022 (0.248). (2) Compared to 2022, the ecosystem health levels under the four ecological transformation modes had all improved, with improvement areas accounting for over 60 %, highlighting the urgent necessity of ecological transformation in Shizuishan City. Among them, the Low-Carbon Economic Development Scenario exhibited the largest improvement area, reaching 75.81 %. (3) Ecological system vitality was identified as the dominant dimension influencing the ecological health in this region. This study emphasized multi-objective development needs and provided an integrated ecosystem health assessment method for assessing the comprehensive ecological effects of future ecological transformation modes in resource-exhausted cities.
Related Concept Videos
Sustainable Development
Bioremediation
Threats to Biodiversity
Design Example: Analyzing Capacity Contours for Flood Risk Assessment
Social Traps
Stress Prevention and Stress Management Techniques VI
Motivation and Self-Determination
Motivation, the driving force behind behavior, plays a pivotal role at every stage of the change process. The research...

