[Construction and Optimization of Ecological Security Pattern Based on Spatial Conflict Regulation: A Case Study of...

Against the backdrop of spatial imbalance and frequent conflicts within metropolitan areas， constructing ecological security patterns （ESPs） that balance ecological value with spatial conflict adaptability is essential for promoting coordinated regional development. Existing ESPs construction methods primarily focus on ecological structural connectivity and functional importance assessments， while often overlooking real-world constraints such as spatial conflict intensity. This oversight leads to overlaps between identified ecological zones and high-conflict areas， limiting the applicability and effectiveness of such patterns in territorial spatial planning. To address this issue， this study takes the Xi'an metropolitan area as a case study， introducing spatial conflict intensity as a regulatory factor to optimize the identification of ecological sources and to construct conflict-regulated ESPs. Based on graph theory， the performance of this pattern is evaluated in comparison with mainstream structural， functional， and integrated ESPs across dimensions such as source robustness and network connectivity. The results showed that the conflict-regulated ESPs identified 228 ecological sources with a total area of 3 240.34 km² and 594 ecological corridors with a total length of approximately 3，814.71 km. Compared to the other three ESPs types， the conflict-regulated pattern demonstrated superior performance in terms of source conflict robustness （0.491 8）， network closure （α = 0.286 3）， line-point ratio （β = 0.571 2）， and cost ratio （c = 0.991 9）. The study confirms that integrating spatial conflict factors into ESPs construction significantly enhances its practical adaptability and implementability， offering theoretical support and methodological pathways for optimizing ecological spatial patterns under multi-objective constraints in metropolitan regions.