About This Special Issue
Ecological vulnerability is one of the important indicators for assessing the evolution process and condition of the regional ecological environment, which has become a hot issue in the field of eco-environmental change. Ecosystems directly contribute to the social and economic development by providing tangible material products and intangible services for human beings. However, the ecological environment has experienced a trend of deterioration under the combined actions of global warming and human activities. Therefore, implementing ecological environment assessment is of utmost importance under the changing environment. Quantitative evaluation of the spatio-temporal evolution process of ecological vulnerability can effectively determine and predict the status of the regional ecological environment, providing a scientific basis for eco-environmental protection measures. Thus, ecological vulnerability evaluation and prediction has become a focal point in the study of ecological mentoring and sustainable utilization of resources, gathering wide attention from ecologists, geographers and economists.
However, there were currently no uniform standards for research level, scale, indicators, systems, and methods used in ecological vulnerability evaluation, which leads to large divergences in the ecological vulnerability evaluation results and hinders comparisons among different study regions. Therefore, establishing a scientific, standardized and feasible ecological vulnerability evaluation system and methods to accurately evaluate the ecological vulnerability of large-scale zones on spatial and temporal scales has become a hot issue among scholars under the global change.
Ecological vulnerability is an inherent attribute of an ecosystem that refers to the sensitive response and resilience to external disturbances on certain spatial and time scales. Ecological vulnerability assessment and quantitative analysis of ecosystem responses to the natural-human activities can scientifically reveal the change patterns and evolution mechanisms of ecosystem vulnerability, providing a basis for decision-making on ecological environmental protection.
Based on the above, this Research Topic aims at collecting articles providing approaches, methods, and tools to assess and reveal the change trend and characteristics of ecological vulnerability. Moreover, the Research Topic is devoted to promoting advances in understanding and modeling the relationships between global change and regional ecological vulnerability.
Through this special issue, we aim to promote advances in understanding and modeling the relationships between global change and regional ecological vulnerability. We welcome researchers from various disciplines to provide interdisciplinary perspectives on Global Change and Ecological Vulnerability. Your contributions will play a crucial role in advancing knowledge in this field.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Ecological vulnerability assessment methods
- Effects of land use change on ecological vulnerability
- Change patterns of mountainous ecological vulnerability
- Effects of climate change and human activities on ecological vulnerability
- Driving mechanisms of regional ecological vulnerability
- Land use change and carbon storage simulation