'ig 2008 
83 
indation 
Dried by 
esearch 
riticism 
A RESARCH ON THE ASSESSMENT OF REGIONAL ECOLOGICAL SECURITY 
BASED ON GIS&RS 
Zou xiuping 3 , Chen Shaofeng 3 ’ *, Qi Qingwen b 
institute of Policy and Management, CAS, Haidian Zhongguancun donglu 55#, Beijing 100190, China. - 
zouxp@casipm.ac.cn, sfchen@casipm.ac.cn. 
b Institute of Geographical sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Anwai Datun Road Al 1#,Beijing 
100101,China. - qiqw@igsnrr.ac.cn 
Commission Youth Forum (YF) 
KEY WORDS: Ecological security, Spatial-temporal change, Assessment, RS, GIS 
ABSTRACT: 
Ecological security is an important basis of the entire human security system, the cornerstone for human survival. The assessment of 
ecological security is crucial for making decisions to avoid ecological disaster. This paper investigates the methods on ecological 
security assessment in existing research, and develops an assessment method for assessing the spatial-temporal change of regional 
eco-security based on RS and GIS. The method includes the several steps: (l)establishing evaluation standards and indicator system, 
(2) environment information extracting from remote sensing images, (3) specialization of census data, (4) establishing the weight 
overlay model based on multi-source data in GIS environment. The paper describes an application of this method as a case study. 
Taking Xishuangbanna as an example, we select the remote sensing images and the census data in 2000, and establish an assessment 
method including the indicator system and assessment model, and construct an integrated assessment framework based on data 
integrity, security assessment with the support of the ARCGIS9.2 environment. The proposed assessment method enables decision 
makers to better know the spatial-temporal status of ecological security in making policies for achieving sustainable development. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The development of human society have exploited natural 
ecosystem such as land, forest, and water, and caused changes 
in component, structure and function of natural ecosystem. As 
the serious results, landscape is fragmented, natural species are 
reduced, some of them are extinct, some exotic organisms and 
even useless materials (waste) are introduced, air and water is 
polluted, and soil is eroded. These changes have brought out 
many serious eco-environment problems: soil erosion and 
degradation; forest decrease; air pollution; water pollution; 
poverty; disaster; greenhouse gases increase; ozone layer 
depletion; energy shortage; ocean pollution; and, species 
extinction. Furthermore, these serious eco-environment 
problems have caused many even more serious ecological 
security problems: environment health problems, ecological 
refuges, and resource war, species extinction. These severe eco- 
security problems have menaced the vital interests of a nation 
or people seriously, and blocked the development of human 
society further. It is urgent to find effective ways to resolve the 
problems (Xiaoqing Shi, 2005). 
Environmental security as a formal science term is appeared in 
the famous report named “Our common Future”. Environmental 
degradation is fundamentally implicated in economic and 
political insecurities in 1987 (Mayers, 1993). Ecological 
security, a concept first proposed by the government of the 
United States, has drawn considerable attention from the 
international research community (Ezeonu, 2000). Because of 
the short history of study of this concept, there is no universally 
accepted definition of ecological security. At present, there 
exist broad-sense and narrow-sense concepts of ecological 
security. The broad-sense ecological security is the status 
reflecting the threat to human living, health, basic right, living 
guarantee, necessary resources, social orders and the abilities to 
adapt to environment change, which includes natural, economic, 
and social ecological security (Costanza et al., 1992; Dobson et 
al., 1997; Norton et al., 1992). The narrow-sense ecological 
security is the security of nature and semi-nature ecosystem, 
which is the reflection of the ecosystem integrity and health 
(Xiao et al., 2002). Ecological security Focus on interactions 
between economic development and the ecological environment, 
on the presence of a sound ecosystem, on sustainable 
exploitation of natural resources, and on harmony between 
humans and nature. 
Assessment of ecological security evolved from the fields of 
ecological risk analysis and ecological health studies based on 
hierarchical patch dynamics. Since the assessment of ecological 
security require a lot of data such as social economic data, 
environment data, natural resource data and so on, it is essential 
to establish an assessing model which can integrate the multi 
sources data, and provide a quantitative and more effective 
assessment. 
Currently, the methods of comprehensive evaluation, ecological 
modeling, and landscape ecology are the main approaches 
being adopted for the assessment of ecological security. 
Comprehensive evaluation simplifies the evaluation process and 
provides comparatively objective results by simplifying the 
indices without losing key index information. It has been 
widely used in evaluating geographically typical regions or 
ecosystems. The ecological modeling method, which is based 
on the development of a mathematical model, has gradually 
become a valid tool in the assessment and management of 
ecological security. This method is further applied at the levels