Ecological security pattern construction based on ecological protection redlines

Abstract

Ecological protection redlines are the management and control boundary delimited by government according to law and regulations, and are the baseline of ecological safety. They include important ecological functional regions, sensitive ecotopes, and fragile ecotopes. As the concept of the ecological protection redlines has been raised as a national strategy, and the rapid development of demarcating technology and methodology, ecological protection redlines have become a core issue in the field of ecological security. Due to obvious boundary, integration, and comprehensiveness, the ecological protection redlines can be used as the basic spatial element to create a pattern of ecological security, and provide a new method for ecological space pattern construction and optimization. Based on the research progress of ecological safety patterns and the basic theories of ecological protection redlines, this paper attempts to regard the ecological protection redlines as the source area of ecological protection, and furthermore to construct the ecological corridor and strategy node, thus forming a complete ecological security pattern including patterns protecting ecological function, residential environment safety, and biodiversity maintenance. The construction of ecological security patterns based on ecological redlines can effectively protect, restore and reconstruct ecosystems, and also ensure the sustainability of important ecological services. Further emphasis should be put in the following aspects: internal relationships within process-function-pattern in ecological protection redlines, comprehensive protection of marine and land ecological safety patterns, supporting management and control measures, and the system of supervision and evaluation.