Land Use Scenario Simulation Under the Ecological Restriction:A Case Study of Zhengzhou-Kaifeng Metropolitan Area in China

Amid China’s effort to push forward urbanization, the ecological space is largely occupied, and thus the regional ecosystem service is on a worsening and declining trajectory, putting the regional ecological security in danger. In this connection, how to optimize the land resources utilization holds the key to land use planning. Against this background, this study focused on the comprehensive index, namely index on water security, biodiversity conversation and natural recreation, in Zhengzhou-kaifeng metropolitan area, and identified ecological significance. Given ecologically important land as constraints, MCE (Multi Criteria Evaluation) and CA-MARKOV model were employed to simulate how the land use pattern would evolve in the scenarios of natural development and ecological priority in 2019. The findings showed that ecologically important lands occupied 553.77 km2, and accounted for 18.49% of the total Zhengzhou-kaifeng metropolitan area while, in the context of ecological priority and natural development, new construction lands occupied 0 km2 and 16.64 km2 of the ecologically important lands respectively. Thus, against the backdrop of ecological priority, the ecologically important lands were well-protected while the landscapes tended to be fragmented.