The Forecast of Beijing Habitat Quality Dynamics Considering the Government Land Use Planning and the City’s Spatial Heterogeneity

The evaluation of the habitat quality dynamics is important to conservation management and sustainable development. Forecasting future habitat quality changes depends on reliable projections of future land uses that align with government’s future land-use planning. Additionally, the spatial heterogeneity problem cannot be dismissed in spatial modelling and the uneven distribution of urban development should be considered in the land use simulation and prediction. To address these issues, we established a bidirectional framework: from the top-down side, we impose land use and land cover (LULC) quantity constraints considering the goals of government land use planning; from the bottom-up side, we adopt zoning methods to consider the spatial heterogeneity of land use transition rules for improving the accuracy of land use prediction. We applied this approach to project habitat quality of Beijing in 2035 under different development scenarios. Firstly, we constructed multiple future scenarios (natural development, ND; economic development, ED; ecological protection, EP; livable city, LC) and computed the quantities of various land uses under those scenarios. Secondly, we addressed the spatial heterogeneity issue by adopting the zoning methods to improve the land use simulation accuracy of the PLUS model. Finally, based on the predicted LULC data, we analyzed the future habitat quality patterns in Beijing under different scenarios using InVEST model. We found that the zoning method can improve the simulation accuracy of LULC. Furthermore, significant spatial differences can be found in the habitat quality under different land use scenarios, which represent various government land use strategies. Among the four scenarios, the LC scenario is the most conducive one due to its ability to achieve a good balance between economic and ecological benefits. This study provides evidence for justifying the feasibility of Beijing’s development plan to become a livable city.