Research on the construction of ecological security pattern in Huanggang Mountain area, the Main Peak of Wuyi Mountain

The theory of ecological security pattern provides theoretical basis and technical path for the ecological protection and restoration of landscape complex at regional scale. Taking the important ecological barrier in Southeast China, that is Huanggang Mountain area, the main peak of Wuyi Mountain, as an example, according to the research framework of "Identifying ecological sources - Constructing resistance surfaces - Extracting ecological corridors", a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was adopted to evaluate and extract the areas with extremely important ecosystem service functions in the region, and superimpose the areas with natural reserves to generate ecological source areas. And the resistance surfaces were set for the study area with land type and terrain factors, then the minimum cumulative resistance model was used to extract the ecological corridors, the important ecological function areas were determined as the ecological buffer zones, and the ecological security pattern of Huanggang Mountain area was constructed. The results showed that the area of ecological sources in Huanggang Mountain area was high at 5 808.8 km², accounting for 34.16% of the regional land area, which were mainly distributed in the junction zones between the southern mountains in Jiangxi Province and northern mountains in Fujian Province. 21 ecological corridors in total were extracted, with a length of 455.1 km, connecting the central part of the study area with the source patches in the northeast and southwest in a group form. The ecological buffer zones covered an area of 1 574.13 km², accounting for 9.2%, and mainly distributed in the northern mountainous areas of the region. The study broke the boundaries of provinces, cities and river basins, regarded the study area as a complete community of life, fully considered the integrity of ecological structure, the connectivity of ecological process and the importance of ecological functions, and constructed a regional-scale point-line-plane ecological security pattern, which could provide spatial guidance for the local implementation of regional integrated conservation and restoration.