Scenario-based ecological security patterns to indicate landscape sustainability: a case study on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Context When setting the goal of landscape sustainability in landscape management, a key theoretical question should be which landscape patterns are more sustainable, whereas there were few studies that further compared optimization scenarios. Objectives This article sought to identify the future scenario of landscape services and the most sustainable landscape in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Methods This study adopts the parameter of ecological security pattern (ESP) combining with landscape connectivity and landscape service as indicators to assess the sustainability of landscape patterns in 2010, 2020 and 2030 with different land use scenarios in Representative Concentration Pathways. Results The results showed that (1) the area with high quality of the three landscape services was mainly concentrated in the southeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, where a large area of forest was distributed, and the low quality area was located in the northwest, which was bare land in 2010; (2) the landscape services showed a declining trend under the RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5 scenarios from 2020 to 2030, whereas the values remained stable under the RCP 6.0 and RCP 8.5 scenarios; and (3) there were 9 ecological sources and 16-17 corridors within the ESP scenarios with quantitative parameters to indicate the landscape sustainability of the scenarios. Conclusions The approach of this study showed the possibility of using ESP scenarios to quantitatively indicate the sustainability of landscape patterns and provide guidance for future landscape management.