Sustainable Ecological Restoration Planning Strategies Based on Watershed Scenario Simulation: A Case Study of the Wuhan Metropolitan Area

Climate change is profoundly reshaping watershed hydrological regimes and threatening the sustainability of regional ecosystems, rendering traditional ecological restoration planning—primarily reliant on static baselines—insufficient to support long-term resilience under future environmental conditions. To enhance the sustainability of metropolitan ecological restoration, this study develops a climate-adaptive restoration framework for the Wuhan Metropolitan Area, structured around “climate scenario—hydrological simulation—zoning delineation—strategy formulation.” The framework aims to elucidate how projected hydrological shifts constrain the spatial configuration of ecological restoration. Under the RCP4.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) scenario, the WEP-L (Water and Energy transfer Processes in Large river basins) distributed hydrological model was calibrated and validated using observed hydrological data from 2016–2020 and subsequently applied to simulate the spatiotemporal evolution of precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, and total water resources in 2035. Hydrological trend analyses were further conducted at the secondary watershed scale to assess the differentiated impacts of future hydrological changes across planning units. Based on these simulations, ecological sensitivity and ecosystem service assessments were integrated to identify priority restoration areas, forming a “five-zone × three-tier” sustainable restoration zoning system encompassing farmland restoration, forest ecological restoration, soil and water conservation restoration, river and lake wetland ecological restoration, and urban habitat improvement restoration, classified into general, important, and extremely important levels. A comprehensive “four-water” management scheme—addressing water security, water resources, water environment, and water landscape—was subsequently proposed to strengthen the sustainable supply capacity and overall resilience of metropolitan ecosystems. Results indicate that by 2035, hydrological processes in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area will exhibit pronounced spatial heterogeneity, with uneven changes in precipitation and runoff further intensifying disparities in regional water availability. These findings highlight the necessity of incorporating scenario-based hydrological constraints into sustainable ecological restoration planning. The proposed technical framework provides a transferable pathway for enhancing watershed ecosystem sustainability and resilience under climate change.