Abstract
The impact of human activities on terrestrial ecosystems is becoming more intense than ever in history. Human disturbance analyses play important roles in appropriately managing the human–environment relationship. In this study, a human disturbance index (HDI) that uses land use and land cover data from 1980, 2000, 2010, and 2018 is proposed to assess the human disturbance of ecosystems in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. The HDI is first calculated by classifying the human disturbance intensity into seven levels and 13 categories from weak to strong in ecosystems. Then the driving factors of the HDI spatial pattern change are explored using a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The results showed that the spatial pattern of the HDI was high in the middle and low in the surrounding areas. The intensity of human disturbance increased, and the medium and high disturbance areas expanded during 1980–2018, especially in Guangzhou, Foshan, Shenzhen, and Dongguan. Human disturbance displayed an obvious spatial heterogeneity. The GWR model had a better explanation effect of the analysis of the HDI change drivers. The driving effect of the socioeconomic conditions was significantly stronger than that of the natural environmental. This study assists in understanding the distribution and change characteristics of the ecological environment in areas with strong human activities and provides a reference for related studies.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Miss Xiaoxiao Wang and Wei Yang for their assistance in running GWR Model and drawing, respectively. Thanks to three anonymous reviewers and the editor for their valuable and constructive comments and suggestions. We also thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
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This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Research Planning Project for Universities of Jiangxi Province (No. GL20116), the Climbing Program Special Funds for Science and Technology Innovation Strategy of Guangdong Province (No. pdjh2020b0169), the University Students Innovation Practice Training Program of The Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Challenge Cup Gold Seed Project of South China Normal University (No. 20DKKA01).
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Xiaojun Wang: conceptualization, methodology, and writing—original draft preparation; Guangxu Liu, Aicun Xiang, and Salman Qureshi: writing—review and editing, supervision; Tianhang Li, Dezhuo Song, and Churan Zhang: resources, data curation, and writing—original draft preparation. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Wang, ., Liu, G., Xiang, A. et al. Quantifying the human disturbance intensity of ecosystems and its natural and socioeconomic driving factors in urban agglomeration in South China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 11493–11509 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16349-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16349-1