Geospatial land surface-based thermal scenarios for wetland ecological risk assessment and its landscape dynamics simulation in Bayanbulak Wetland, Northwestern China

Context: Modifications to land surface thermal regime by climate change and land cover/land-use change may influence ecosystem structure and function in arid landscapes, but relevant studies are scarce. Large changes in the land surface thermal regime can disturb the hydro-ecological integrity of these landscapes. Thus, it is important to assess landscape change and ecological risk to promote arid landscape sustainability. Objectives: This study predicted the landscape change and quantified the Bayanbulak ecological risk evolution through a susceptibility-hazard assessment system. Methods: CA–Markov model was used to simulate the landscape change, while ERA model that builds the susceptibility-hazard indices rapport was applied to evaluate the Bayanbulak wetland ecological risk using 30 m remotely sensed data. Results: Findings unveiled that modifications in water, meadow, and marshes are predicted to decline at a rate of 39.3, 6.32, 23.98% in 2069 respectively. As wetland hazard, the LST average increased from 20 to 22 °C with a maximum value of 35.2 °C from 1994 to 2019. Likewise, wetland susceptibility mean value increased from 1.10 to 1.20, a growth rate of 9.09%. Though the decline in high-risk zones, moderate risk zones drastically augmented at the extent of 70.5% while low risk and no risk zones declined with a reduction rate of 18.9 and 95.8% respectively. Overall observations exhibited that Bayanbulak ecological risk is slightly evolving. Conclusion: Bayanbulak is a pool of ecosystem services. By highlighting its ecological risk evolution, we call upon the focus on factors driving LST increment and adopt climatic adaptation measures of aqua-terrestrial ecosystems for Bayanbulak management.