Ecological restoration zoning of territorial space in China: An ecosystem health perspective

Rapid urbanization and high-intensity socio-economic activities in China have caused severe ecological problems. Implementing ecological restoration in China has become an inevitable way to restore the ecosystem. Ecosystem health is crucial for evaluating ecological conditions and trends, but comprehensive national studies that use quantitative ecosystem health assessments to guide specific ecological restoration are lacking. This study constructs the Vigor-Organization-Resilience-Services (VORS) model to evaluate the ecosystem health level of China during 2000–2020. Then, through the natural breakpoint and intelligent clustering correction, we carried out the ecological restoration zoning and proposed corresponding measures. The results show that China's overall ecosystem health declined from 2000 to 2020, and ecological restoration is imminent. The spatial pattern of ecosystem health is generally favorable in the south and usually poor in the north. China protects poor ecosystems' health well but needs more for better ones. To combat this degradation, we propose a zoning strategy that classifies the landscape into five categories: Ecosystem Conservation Areas (3.47%), focusing on biodiversity preservation; Ecosystem Enhancement Areas (10.53%), aiming at increasing ecological resilience; Ecosystem Buffer Zones (23.04%), intending to mitigate human impacts; Ecosystem Correction Zones (33.79%), targeting at restoring degraded ecosystems; and Ecosystem Reshaping Zones (29.17%), designing to revitalize ecological functions. The ecological restoration zoning in China proposed in this study, combined with appropriate and practical restoration tools, will help mitigate ecological problems and improve stability and ecosystem health.