Eco-Environmental Quality Evaluation and Dynamic Ecological Patterns for Songhua River Watershed in Harbin Section, China

Analyses of land use change (LUC) is fundamental to the understanding of economical development, social contradiction and environmental problems, therefore, in this paper, the Songhua River watershed was selected as a case study area for quantitative evaluation of eco-environment quality. Technologies of RS (remote sensing), GIS (geographic information system), the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) methods, and other statistical methods were employed to implement. The results shown that during the recent decade, more than 87% of the total land area in the study area was dominated by agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry production; the areas of foreland and water body were increased, while others decreased .The eco-environment response to LUC displayed spatial distribution, it can be concluded that the excellent eco-environment quality, with the stable ecosystem, was mainly located in mountain region covering a larger vegetation, the poor and bad level of eco-environment quality associated with plain region that is dominated by the greater extent of human activities. The change of eco-environment quality grades in the study area was mainly associated with LUC. The social economic indicators were not integrated into that ecological model, thereby, in the course of economic development, more attention should be paid to this aspect in future studies in order to better coordinate the relationship between economical development and ecological processes.