Maintenance and Optimization of Ecological Space in Natural Resource-Advantaged Cities: A Case Study in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province

Abstract

Natural resources are the material basis of urban construction, as well as a crucial factor that determines the livability and employment opportunities of a given city. Under the traditional development model, cities rely on their natural resources to develop their regional economy. However, this is always accompanied by environmental impacts. Maintaining and optimizing the ecological environment of such cities during economic development is not only related to the sustainable development and transformation of resource-based cities, but also affects the overall status of sustainable urbanization and construction. This study takes Zhangzhou City, Fujian Province, as a typical case to analyze the characteristics and status of urban ecological space. We explored a positioning and optimization strategy based on the proper management of urban ecological space systems in the future. The morphological spatial pattern analysis method (MSPA) and the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model were used to identify the urban ecological sources and extract the potential ecological corridors between the ecological sources. Ecological corridors were constructed by quantitatively analyzing their importance with a gravity model. Our findings indicated that the ecological area and the construction land area in Zhangzhou present a significant opposition. We identified 18 important core areas and 21 important corridors, which are concentrated in the west and north of Zhangzhou. Based on these findings, our suggestion is to maintain the status quo of urban ecology, set up ecological rest spaces around important roads, and increase the number of green facilities in the city.