Identification of key areas of territorial ecological restoration in Taihang Mountains — A case study of Tang County

Diagnosing and restoring key areas of territorial space is fundamental to promote the construction of ecological civilization. From the perspective of “holistic perspective, system governance and global restoration”, the identification of key areas and suggestions for restoration can make up for some deficiencies existing in current research. In this paper, Tang County, a typical eco-poverty area in Taihang Mountain, is selected as the research area. The ecological quality was determined by integrating habitat quality and ecological service value, and then determine the ecological patch with the best stability as the ecological source, the ecological resistance surface is constructed by using the minimum cumulative resistance model, the ecological corridor is constructed based on the circuit theory. In addition to the ecological pinch points, ecological obstacle points and ecological break points included in the existing studies, the low ecological key areas are supplemented to identify, which are obtained from the lowest grade patches extracted during ecological quality evaluation. Some suggestions were put forward, such as priority protection in ecological pinch area, priority restoration in ecological obstacle area, strengthening maintenance in ecological break area, and improving habitat quality in low ecological quality area to prevent further damage. Aiming at the ecological patches with high habitat quality and ecological service value, it is recommended that these patches should be ecologically protected by prohibiting the encroachment of non-ecological construction projects. For the key ecological areas where the land use types are woodland, grassland and farmland, it is recommended to plant plants adapted to the native environment to increase vegetation abundance, return farmland to forests, and return to grassland for ecological restoration. It is recommended to build culverts and tunnels for the smooth movement of organisms in the area of obstacles caused by the cutting effect of traffic roads. The distribution of low ecological quality areas is relatively scattered, so the degraded landscape during ecological restoration can be combined with the surrounding landscape to achieve the effect of improving ecological quality. In addition, attention should be paid to the environmental protection of rural residential areas and construction land. The restoration of construction land should actively respond to the rural revitalization strategy. It can develop sightseeing agriculture in some areas, control the development intensity of the southeast of the research area, and speed up the greening construction of villages. In this way, ecological restoration of low ecological quality areas will be carried out. The research showed that: The remote sensing ecological index of Tang County in 2000, 2010 and 2018 were 0.57, 0.64 and 0.56, respectively. The ecological quality was all in good grade, and the ecological quality increased firstly and then declined. We identified 10 of ecological sources with good stability, with an area of 91.22 km², accounting for 6.4% of the total area, which mainly distributed in the north and southwest of the study area. The land use types were forest land and water area. We also identified 15 of ecological pinch points, 42 of ecological barrier points and 28 of ecological break points, and the area of low ecological quality was 178 km², accounting for about 1/10 of the total area. From the perspective of overall connectivity, this study systematically identified the key areas of territorial space restoration in Tang County of Taihang Mountain, and put forward protection and restoration measures, which could provide a realistic reference for ecological restoration in Taihang Mountain.