Spatio-temporal evolution of the social-ecological landscape resilience and management zoning in the loess hill and gully region of China

Abstract

Discussions on the evolutionary process and mechanism of social-ecological landscape resilience play an important role in maintaining the sustainable provision of landscape services. However, studies on the evolutionary process and mechanism of social-ecological landscapes at the micro-scale have received relatively little attention. The purpose of this research is to analyze the spatio-temporal evolution of social-ecological landscape resilience at the micro-level in Gaoqu Township in Mizhi County, China. A three-dimensional (ecosystem, social system, and production system) indicator was constructed to quantitatively evaluate the social-ecological landscape resilience. The results showed that (1) the spatio-temporal variation in the three subsystems’ resilience was extensive from 2012 to 2018. The ecosystem resilience was distributed in the northeast-southwest direction, which was consistent with the distribution of gullies. The social system resilience was spatially high in the northwest and low in the southeast. The production system resilience was low in the middle and high in the peripheral regions. The resilience values of the ecosystem, social system and production system increased by 0.127, 0.122 and 0.101, respectively. (2) The spatio-temporal differentiation of the social-ecological landscape resilience was also significant, and its resilience value increased by 11.44%, which showed a spatial pattern with a low center and high surroundings. (3) Finally, based on the status and trend of the social-ecological landscape resilience, 20 villages in the region can be divided into predominantly advancing areas, predominantly stable areas, predominantly attenuation areas, emerging advancing areas, and sensitive-vulnerable areas. This study can provide the spatial guidance for differentiated sustainable development in the Loess hill and gully region based on the local conditions of the social-ecological landscapes.

Introduction

Social-ecological landscapes (SELs) are complicated accommodative systems that contain social-ecological components and their mutual effects, with spatial properties (Petrosillo et al., 2010; Biggs et al., 2012; Cumming et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2013). Thus far, scholars have formed some valuable consensuses on the study of SELs. And they characterize an SEL as a social-ecological system with a certain time evolution and development history (Ciftcioglu, 2017). With the development of landscape ecology and GIS, academia has gradually begun to study social-ecological systems from the spatial level. These studies emphasize more the spatial scale and pay more attention to the spatial pattern and interaction of the various elements of the system (Folke, 2006; Petrosillo et al., 2010). Furthermore, some scholars have focused on the socio-cultural aspects of SELs and argued that the improvement of SELs, in turn, enhances human well-being and protects the ecological environment (Andrew et al., 2011). Currently, against the background of land use changes, the evolution of social-ecological landscape resilience (SELR) is mainly influenced by multiple factors such as global environmental change, urbanization development and local specific social ecological environment. In the loess hilly and gully regions of China, the significance of land use changes has seriously affected the welfare of local communities, biodiversity conservation and regional production trends and patterns (Li et al., 2016; Jia et al., 2018). With the conditions of an ever-changing environment, maintaining and enhancing SELR is the foundation of regional sustainable development (Ciftcioglu, 2017). Therefore, the scientific evaluation and effective improvement of SELR have attracted the attention of many interdisciplinary research fields, such as geography, ecology, and sociology (Ciftcioglu, 2017; Zhang et al., 2019). An analysis of the evolution of SELR and its management zoning is conducive to revealing the human activities in the ecological environment and sustaining necessary landscape services, which are significant for regional sustainable development.

Resilience thinking provides a sustainable analytical framework for the operation of social-ecological systems at different spatio-temporal scales (Walker et al., 2004; Carpenter et al., 2005). SELR refers to the ability to withstand perturbations on the condition that the SEL does not transform states (Rescia et al., 2010; Min et al., 2017). Compared with a traditional resilience evaluation, the outstanding characteristics of an SELR evaluation are represented by the quantitative representation of resilience heterogeneity (Rescia et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2019). The previous research on SELR evaluation mainly focuses on two aspects. (1) On the one hand, the previous research evaluates the spatial heterogeneity of SELR at the macro-scale (Li et al., 2014; Rescia et al., 2017). Luo et al. (2018) described the spatio-temporal characteristics of urban landscape resilience based on the trend analysis of a vegetation index and night lighting data. Rescia et al. (2018) explored the agricultural landscape resilience at different scales through landscape level indicators. Furthermore, network analysis based on connectivity effectively characterizes geographical location characteristics and becomes a powerful quantitative approach for SELR (Kärrholm et al., 2014). In the research, great breakthroughs have been made in quantitatively characterizing the spatial heterogeneity of SELR based on landscape indicators, a natural index, and a space index, but some limitations still exist in terms of the elemental characteristics and the relationships of subsystems in social-ecological systems. (2) On the other hand, previous research examines the temporal evolution of SELR at the micro-scale (Bgamini et al., 2010; Pliening et al., 2012; Yang et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015). Rescia et al. (2010) observed the 50-year evolution of two nature reserves in Spain and found that rural employment opportunities and landscape homogeneity affect landscape resilience. Wang et al. (2015) analyzed the evolutionary process of SELR in Qiandao Lake, China and found that the resilience of the subsystems at different stages is significantly different. The research in this area focuses on the characteristics (relationships) of micro-scale system elements and the mechanism of system evolution in the evaluation of SELR, but there is little analysis of system spatial patterns. Accordingly, based on systematic thought patterns, considering the spatio-temporal differentiation and evolution of micro-scale SELs and their elements has become important in the research of SELR.

In addition, although the research on SELR has made breakthroughs in its evaluation methods, resilience level, spatial-temporal evolution and spatial mapping, it is necessary to further study the management division of SELR (Li et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2015; Peng et al., 2019; Zhang et al., 2019). Peng et al. (2019) adopted a self-organizing feature map (SOFM) method to manage mountainous landscape with the balance and synergy of landscape functions. Li et al. (2014) constructed a zoning unit of Taihu Lake Basin in China based on the two standards of the protection and restoration of the SEL. For the research scale, the research on SELR is mostly investigated from the macro scale (i.e., the geomorphic unit, the watershed unit, and the ecological function zoning unit), as this scale conveniently sustains the integrity of the regional natural environment. There is relatively little research on the classification of SELR based on the micro-level. At a relatively short time scale, the economy, culture and institutions often have greater impacts than natural factors have on the evolution of rural landscapes (Long et al., 2009; Li et al., 2010; Qasim et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2017). Long et al. (2012) pointed out that the reconstruction of rural landscapes is centered on the transformation of local socio-economic forms and is characterized by the adjustment of the rural regional spatial pattern. Yang et al. (2015) showed that the resilience of rural communities is mainly affected by social factors such as collective memory, livelihood diversity and adaptability. Therefore, by fully considering the homogeneity of the natural foundation of the SELs at the micro-scale, the frequency of human activities and the convenience of management, this paper conducts village scale management zoning, which is conducive to more reasonable management measures.

The Loess hill and gully region is a typical fragile ecological region, and it is also one of the most poverty-stricken areas in China (Zhou et al., 2012). In this region, the unreasonable long-term exploitation and utilization of resources has caused regional vegetation degradation, serious soil erosion and drastic land productivity declines (Fu et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017). Since 1999, when the China Grain for Green Project Program¹ was implemented, the regional natural ecological environment has been improved significantly (Chen et al., 2016; Cao et al., 2018). Therefore, by taking Gaoqu Township as a case study, we aim to 1) construct a micro-scale SELR evaluation index system, 2) analyze the spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of SELR on a micro-scale, and 3) propose a management zoning plan for this rural SELs.