Abstract
With the emergence of unhealthy, incomplete and unsustainable ecological environment in the process of urbanization, the ecological security situation in the development process of Wuhan metropolitan area (WMA) is increasingly serious. The ecological contradiction generally exists between the stakeholders, between the supply and demand of products, and between the whole and the local areas, which constantly threatens the regional ecological security pattern and becomes an important challenge for the sustainable development of urban agglomeration in Wuhan. Regional ecological security assessment is derived from human's attention to life support system and the practical needs of environmental management and decision-making. It is a prerequisite for planning the ecological security pattern at the macro-level. Based on the public data in the statistical yearbook of Hubei province of China from 2010 to 2019, this paper adopted the theory and method of "province hectare" ecological footprint with high matching degree, applied the ecological pressure index model, and analyzed and simulated the ecological security situation of WMA with ArcGIS and GeoDa software. The paper finds that the total ecological footprint of WMA has been increasing year by year since 2010. The overall level of ecological security gradually improved from "moderate warning" to "critical security". There is spatial heterogeneity in the ecological security status of each prefecture-level city, which has significant differences in the central and peripheral areas, mountain and plain areas, and watershed and non-watershed areas. Further exploration of the ecological security pattern of WMA reveals that this kind of pattern is derived from the following points. (1) The gradual decoupling of the dependence of ecological footprint on the level of urbanization; (2) The spatial structural imbalance of ecological supply and demand within the urban agglomeration system; (3) The exponential improvement of consumption level and energy consumption in the time dimension. Based on this, the paper proposes a response mechanism to the existing and potential ecological risks at the level of urban agglomeration. First of all, in the hypothetical scenario, ecological compensation is carried out by means of trade to promote regional ecological economic balance. Secondly, adopting the regulation strategy of "industrial transfer - ecological migration" to control the size of urban population moderately. Thirdly, building a government-led and multi-sectoral management mechanism to strictly control and intensively utilize high-volume production factor land. Finally realize the virtuous cycle of ecological production, reduce the ecological risk and promote the sustainable development of regional urban system.
