Ecosystem health assessment: A comprehensive and detailed analysis of the case study in coastal metropolitan region, eastern China

The ecosystem health of coastal metropolitan regions is changing, which will exert a negative impact on human survival and development in the future. In this case, it is a novel and effective method to evaluate the regional ecosystem health based on land use/land cover change (LUCC) and landscape ecology theories. This paper constructed an integrated ecosystem health assessment framework (top-down), including objective layer, factor layer and index layer. Comprehensive and detailed analytical methodologies (bottom-up) were employed to explore the process of ecosystem health change in Shanghai and Hangzhou Bay (SHB) at multiple scales. The results showed that, in the two periods of 2001-2007 and 2007-2013, the regional ecosystem health status continued to degrade at city scale, and this decline spread to the surrounding areas from the central cities (Shanghai and Jiaxing). Similar diffusion phenomenon was also observed at county scale (centered on Downtown Shanghai). Notably, the vigor factor was found to make the greatest contribution to the changes of ecosystem health. To conclude, integrated assessment framework and comprehensive/detailed analysis combined with LUCC and landscape patterns are meaningful exploration for ecosystem health assessment, and clustering analysis provides a foundation for government to formulate regional planning and management policies pertinently.