27 / 2023-03-28 10:06:17

Coal mining sites’ stress analysis on critical ecological space of Shandong Sec-tion in the Yellow River Basin

Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin; critical ecological space (CES); ecosystem service function; coal mining area; spatial stress

As an important ecological corridor in the lower reaches of the Yellow River Basin, Shandong Province has prominent ecological functions and obvious advantages in mineral resources endowment. It is of great practical significance to study the coordinated development of coal mining and ecological environmental protection of Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin to coordinate regional energy and ecological security. In order to quantify the coal mining sites’ stress of Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin, the CES were identified based on the hierarchical evaluation of the importance and sensitivity of ecosystem services, and the spatial stress index was constructed to analyze the coal mining sites’ stress degree to the CES in the research area. The results show that: (1) the overall ecosystem service function is at the medium and upper level, and the ecosystem service function in the west of the Yellow River is lower than that in the east. The water conservation function is the dominant factor of the ecosystem service function. (2) The overall ecosystem sensitivity is not high, mainly characterized by insensitivity, average sensitivity and medium sensitivity, the total area of which accounted for 83.43%. The ecosystem sensitivity in the east of the Yellow River is significantly higher than that in the west, and the spatial distribution of highly sensitive and extremely sensitive areas is closely related to the elevation and slope. (3) The CES area of Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin is 42432.57 km², accounting for 50.95% of the total area, mainly distributed in the east of the Yellow River. The bottom-line ecological space is concentrated in distribution and closely related to the spatial distribution of the highly sensitive and extremely sensitive areas in ecosystem. The crisis ecological space is mainly distributed in the periphery of the bottom-line ecological space and the outer perimeter of the Nansi Lake. The buffer ecological space area is 25595.87km², accounting for 30.74%. (4) The coal mining’s stress degree on the ecosystem service function importance, ecosystem sensitivity and CES is relatively low of Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin. The stress index of buffer, crisis and bottom-line CES are 7.07%, 4.24% and 1.13% respectively. The stress index of the bottom-line CES is the lowest, but this area plays an extremely important role in the ecological environment, and is extremely sensitive. Therefore, this region should follow the principle of avoiding exploitation activities in coal mining area, strictly prohibit the development of strong interference with human activities, and strengthen the protection and restoration of ecological system. The research aims to provide a reference for comprehensive improvement of ecological environment, optimization of coal resources exploitation and utilization layout, and construction of a new pattern of high-quality coal development of Shandong Section in the Yellow River Basin.