Evaluating land ecological security and examining its relationships with driving factors using GIS and generalized additive model

Highlights: • We assess the spatiotemporal patterns of LES in Ningbo, China during the past four decades. • Five levels of LES are applied including very secure, secure, neutral, insecure and very insecure. • The Ningbo LES has been deteriorating since 1975, and it is now very insecure in the city center. • GAM captures the relationships between LES and driving factors, and identifies the dominant factors. • The dominant factors are proximity to urban infrastructures and the moving window built-up area. Land ecological security (LES) refers to the environmental health and sustainability of the land resources and ecosystems, which are substantially affected by biophysical and socio-economic factors. We assess the spatiotemporal patterns of LES in Ningbo city on the southeast coast of China from 1975 to 2015 and explore the effects of driving factors. Expert evaluation is used to estimate the LES score for each 2 × 2 km grid and map the patterns by Kriging. Five levels of LES are used: very secure, secure, neutral, insecure and very insecure. A generalized additive model (GAM) captures the relationships between LES and driving factors, and identifies the dominant factors. Our results show that the Ningbo LES has been deteriorating since 1975, and it is now very insecure in Ningbo city center and the central area of the satellite city Cixi. The dominant factors affecting LES are distances to city center (D_city), district center (D_district) and road networks (D_roads), and the moving window built-up area (D_ndbi). Among these, D_ndbi is most important as inferred by the highest explained deviance of the GAM. This study improves our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of LES in Ningbo and how LES changes. As a result, it provides insight to help local governments optimize land-use configuration, potentially improving the environment and ecosystems and creating a more environmentally friendly city.