Study on zoning of ecological protection and restoration based on ecological assessment: taking Qinghai Lake Basin as an example

In view of the ecological protection and restoration in China's ecologically vulnerable areas, taking Qinghai Lake Basin as an example, key ecological spaces were identified by evaluating the importance of ecosystem services and ecological sensitivity. At the same time, ecological protection and restoration zones were delimited based on the ecological security pattern and typical ecological problems of the basin, and the restoration strategies for different zones were proposed. The results showed that: 1) The area of extremely important ecosystem services in the basin accounted for about 63.2% of the total basin area, and the area of extremely sensitive ecological zones accounted for 6.55% of the total basin area. 2) The area of core ecological space in Qinghai Lake Basin was 18 746.72 km² and the area of priority ecological space was 5 324.26 km², which together constituted the critical ecological space area accounting for 81.15% of the total area of the basin. 3) According to the natural geographic features of the upper, middle and lower reaches of the basin and the topography, the ecological security pattern of the basin was constructed as "one network and four zones". Based on the ecological security pattern, key ecological space and typical ecological problems, Qinghai Lake Basin was divided into six ecological protection and restoration sub-zones, and engineering measures such as biodiversity protection, construction of wetland ecosystem network and soil and water conservation were put forward.