Dynamic prediction and impact factors analysis of ecological risk in Chinese farming-pastoral ecotone

Abstract Chinese Farming-pastoral Ecotones (CFPE) is the largest ecologically fragile zone in China. The dynamic prediction and impact factors analysis of landscape ecological risk based on LUCC have an important significance for effectively resolving ecological and environmental risk . In this paper, CA-Markov and BRT models were used to quantitatively analyze dynamic change, evolution characteristics, and influencing factors of landscape ecological risk.The results showed that: (1) LUCC types significantly changed from 2000 to 2040, especially in the bareland regions, which decreased by 1.64 times from 2000 to 2020, mainly transferred out to grassland and farmland. (2) The overall ecological risk showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing. The highest ecological risk regions reached an area of 192,000 km2 in 2020 and decreased by 1.78 times from 2020 to 2040, these areas showed high spatial correlation and aggregation. (3) Topographical, climate, and socioeconomic factors had certain impacts on landscape ecological risk. Elevation (24.4%) was the most important factor affecting ecological risk, followed by temperature (19.1%), precipitation (15.7%), slope (13.6%) and GDP (8.4%). The study not only proposes a novel method regarding prediction and quantitative assessment of ecological risk based on influencing factors, but also provides a more precise and specific decision-making basis for sustainable development of ecological safety and social economic in the CFPE.