Impacts of road network expansion on landscape ecological risk in a megacity, China: A case study of Beijing.
Road networks affect the spatial structure of urban landscapes, and with continuous expansion, it will also exert more widespread influences on the regional ecological environment. With the support of geographic information system (GIS) technology, based on the application of various spatial analysis methods, this study analyzed the spatiotemporal changes of road networks and landscape ecological risk in the research area of Beijing to explore the impacts of road network expansion on ecological risk in the urban landscape. The results showed the following: 1) In the dynamic processes of change in the overall landscape pattern, the changing differences in landscape indices of various landscape types were obvious and were primarily related to land-use type. 2) For the changes in a time series, the expansion of the road kernel area was consistent with the extension of the sub-low-risk area in the urban center, but some differences were observed during different stages of development. 3) For the spatial position, the expanding changes in the road kernel area were consistent with the grade changes of the urban central ecological risk, primarily because both had a certain spatial correlation with the expressways. 4) The influence of road network expansion on the ecological risk in the study area had obvious spatial differences, which may be closely associated with the distribution of ecosystem types.
School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha 410004, Hunan, China.
Wenbo
W
Mo
State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. Electronic address: wangy@igsnrr.ac.cn.
Yong
Y
Wang
School of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, Changsha University of Science & Technology, Changsha 410004, Hunan, China.
Yingxue
Y
Zhang
State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
Dafang
D
Zhuang
D000068476:Beijing; D002947:Cities; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004463:Ecology; D017753:Ecosystem; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014186:Transportation
Beijing; Kernel density spatial analysis; Landscape ecological risk; Road network