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Rapid urbanization has led to a significant expansion of urban space, causing ecological problems such as fragmentation, declining landscape connectivity, and decreasing biodiversity. There is an urgent need to mitigate the conflict between urban expansion and ecological environmental protection by constructing ecological networks to help promote sustainable regional development. This study selected the Funiu Mountain area as the study area. Morphological spatial pattern analysis, the minimal cumulative resistance model, and network index evaluation were used to construct an ecological network in the study area and conduct a comparative analysis with local nature reserves. The results showed: (1) nine ecological source sites were identified, concentrated in the central and northern regions, which had a high spatial overlap with local nature reserves; (2) 34 ecological corridors were extracted, which could effectively connect all ecological source sites as well as most nature reserves; (3) 32 ecological nodes were identified, of which 20 strategic points were scattered along ecological corridors, and 12 artificial environment points were scattered in low-lying areas around nature reserves; (4) the ecological network showed a structure of central concentration and peripheral dispersion. The structural evaluation of the network indicated that it had strong integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization aggravates issues related to protection and optimization of the ecological environment. Constructing an ecological network system, including ecological values in planning, and using landscape effects efficiently are important for adjusting regional ecological space and promoting local sustainable development. Land use data from eight time points between 1980 and 2020 in the Zhengzhou Metropolitan Area were used to identify the local ecological sources, corridors and nodes and to identify an ecological network with high structural integrity. The study used the FLUS, MSPA, MCR, and gravity models, hydrological analysis, and network structure evaluation by applying tools such as ArcGIS, Guidos Toolbox and Conefor. The results indicated that: (1) among the nine major ecological sources, those in the Yellow River Basin connected the large-scale sources in the east and west of the network, and the rest were located in the northeast, southeast and southwest of the research area, semi-enclosing the main urban area of Zhengzhou. (2) There were 163 least-cost paths and 58 ecological corridors, mainly distributed along the Yellow River Basin. (3) There were 70 ecological nodes, divided into 10 strategic, 27 natural ecological and 33 artificial environment nodes, distributed in key locations such as the core of each source and the intersection of corridors. (4) The ecological network included all the landscape elements in the research area and connected the main ecological substrates in a semi-enclosing network structure with one horizontal and two vertical corridors and four clusters.