Ecological response to urban development in a changing socio-economic and climate context: Policy implications for balancing regional development and habitat conservation

Rapid land use/cover changes (LUCC) have triggered severe habitat degradation over recent decades. Existing studies mainly focus on how LUCC per se affects habitat quality, while less attention is paid to the integration of LUCC, socio-economic development and climate change as a land use system, and to investigate their synergistic impacts on habitat quality. This study addresses this issue by incorporating a top-down system dynamic model, a bottom-up cellular automata and a habitat quality assessment model. The potential impacts of urban growth, socio-economic development and climate change on habitat quality of Hubei Province, China, were predicted under the four IPCC RCP scenarios. Overall, construction land was predicted to expand fast whereas forested land and cultivated land to shrink significantly from 2015 to 2030, but RCP 2.6 and 4.5 scenarios may maintain higher habitat quality compared with RCP 6.0 and 8.5 scenarios. Severe habitat degradation is likely to occur in the megacity’s surrounding ecosystems under RCP 2.6 and 8.5 scenarios, while the degradation is more likely to occur in middle-sized and small cities under RCP 4.5 and 6.0 scenarios. Further, our findings suggest that fixed asset investments and technology innovation play important roles in mitigating the negative impacts of urban and socio-economic development on habitat quality. This study should provide a useful approach for decision makers to design alternative development scenarios and to strike a balance between regional development and habitat conservation.