Integrated multi-hazard risk to social-ecological systems with green infrastructure prioritization: A case study of the Yangtze River Delta, China

The sustainable future of deltas is increasingly threatened due to natural ecosystem degradation and increasing climate change hazards. Thus, the spatial prioritization of Green Infrastructure (GI) is of great importance for ecosystem conservation and climate adaptation. The existing GI prioritization methods in deltaic regions lack a systematic method of incorporating the state of vulnerability and risk. In this study, a novel method was developed for systematically prioritizing GI management zones based on the biodiversity and ecosystem services that addresses the clear relevance to multi-hazard risk to the social-ecological system (SES). The approach was demonstrated in the Yangtze River Delta, China. The multi-hazard risk to the SES in the county-level administrative regions was evaluated based on the Global Delta Risk Index (GDRI). The outputs were then transferred into a critical cost factor in a combined spatial prioritization of the biodiversity and ecosystem services using the Marxan with Zones software to determine the spatial priorities of multiple management zones (the core zone, conservation zone, and sustainable use zone). Two comparative scenarios were run to illustrate how the inclusion of the multi-hazard risk can affect the spatial prioritization of GI. Based on our results, integrating the multi hazard risk of the SES can effectively coordinate the configuration of GI management zones. This supports our conclusion that the risk to the SES should always be considered during future GI prioritization to ensure the GI network s resilience to multiple climatic changes. Our proposed framework will help guide future applications of GI in global deltas and the implementation of flexible conservation management in a multi-hazard context.