Dynamic evaluation and prediction of the ecological environment quality of the urban agglomeration on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountains

Abstract

In order to timely determine the dynamic changes of the ecological environment quality and future development laws of the urban agglomeration on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains, combined with the actual situation of the urban agglomeration, 11 indicators were selected from the three aspects of natural ecology, social ecology, and economic ecology. To reduce the dimensions of the indicators, principal component analysis, coefficient of variation, and analytic hierarchy process were used based on RS and GIS technology methods, and the ecological environmental quality (EQI) from 2000 to 2018 was dynamically evaluated. Further, the CA-Markov model was introduced to simulate the development status in 2026 for predictive purposes. The main results are as follows: the overall ecological environment of the area exhibited a gradually improving distribution change from southwest to northeast; the proportion of ecological environment classification exhibited a gradually decreasing change pattern; the spatial differentiation of ecological environment quality exhibited a significant spatial positive correlation; from the influencing factors, an observation can be made that natural ecological factors were highly significant; the prediction accuracy verification revealed that the CA-Markov model was suitable for the prediction of the ecological environment quality in the region and had high accuracy; and the comprehensive regional ecological environment quality indexes were 5.7392, 6.1856, and 6.4366, respectively, while the forecasted value for 2026 was predicted to be 6.6285, indicating that the overall ecological environment quality of the region will improve and develop well. The present research results reveal the law of dynamic changes and future development of the ecological environment quality in the region, which can be used as a theoretical reference for the formulation of ecological environmental protection measures.

Keywords: Ecological environment quality; Principal component analysis; Spatial clustering; Spatiotemporal variation; The Northern slope of Tianshan Mountains.