Toward ecological function zoning and comparison to the Ecological Redline Policy: a case study in the Poyang Lake Region, China

Faced with huge environmental problems of ecosystem degradation, Ecological Redline Policy (ERP) in China is a new key national-level policy to manage different land use functions in accordance with development and environmental limits. As the water-land complex ecosystem with the largest freshwater lake, wetland natural reserves and ecological importance in China, Poyang Lake Region (PLR) is selected to quantify and map multiple ecosystem services, investigate the ecological function zoning as part of research on ecological zoning control and major ecological source areas to illustrate and address the implementation of this strategy based on the importance and vulnerability analysis of ecosystem services. According to ecological function zoning results, extremely important, highly important, medium important and important zones respectively account for 26.1%, 28.1%, 17.4% and 28.4% of the total area. With an area of 5422.2 km(2), the extremely important zone is 1010.6 km(2) larger than the ERP. Moreover, 81.6% of the ERP is located in the extremely important zone. By discussing the implications and applications of ecological management, this study contributes to the ecological protection of Poyang Lake and provides a foundation for research on ecological function zoning at the regional scale.

Automated summary

The study on ecological zoning in the Poyang Lake region using the Ecological Redline Policy showed uneven distribution of different importance zones, with the extremely important zone covering a significant portion, contributing to ecological protection and related research.