Incorporating multiple scenarios and landscape ecological risk to optimize ecological security patterns: A Wei River Basin case study

Under the influence of human activities, landscape fragmentation in the Wei River Basin (WRB) has become increasingly severe. Upstream development has intensified soil erosion, and industrial and agricultural pollution in the middle reaches has degraded water quality. Rapid urbanization has further caused habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss. Collectively, these challenges threaten human well-being and hinder sustainable development, making the construction and optimization of an ecological security pattern (ESP) urgently necessary. However, existing studies often fail to systematically integrate future landscape ecological risk (LER) assessment with ESP optimization. This study evaluated regional LER using the “ecological patches–ecological resistance surface (ERS)–ecological corridor” framework, combined with land-use predictions under three development scenarios, and optimized the ESP by adjusting the ERS and extracting ecological corridors. The results indicate that the LER in the WRB follows an “inverted N” distribution, with low-risk areas concentrated in forested mountain regions and high-risk areas mainly in cultivated land subject to intensive human activity. Across future scenarios, ESPs showed fewer ecological breakpoints and improved landscape connectivity than the 2020 baseline. Scenario-based differences emerged in the spatial configuration of ERS adjustments, with the ecological protection scenario yielding the lowest LER and most favorable ESP. This study demonstrates the deep integration of multi-scenario simulation with LER assessment, providing a new framework for ESP optimization. The findings have guiding significance for ecological protection and coordinated development in the WRB and offer a novel paradigm for sustainable development in ecologically fragile basins worldwide.