城市与区域生态关联研究进展

城市及其周边区域正在面临日益严峻的环境污染、生态恶化、资源短缺等问题。这些问题的出现,与长期以来城市发展过程中忽视城市与区域的生态关联密切相关。研究城市与区域的生态关联,对于解决城市与区域的生态环境问题、指导新型城镇化建设具有重要的理论意义与实践价值。主要从以下3个方面系统总结了城市与区域生态关联的研究进展:(1)城市发展对周边区域的生态环境影响,包括直接的胁迫和间接的影响;(2)区域对城市发展的生态支撑;(3)城市与周边区域社会、经济、生态关联的相互作用机制。指出了当前城市与区域生态关联研究中存在的问题和不足:1)城市对周边区域生态环境直接影响的研究较多,且多侧重城市对周边区域的负面影响,对其间接影响的研究较为缺乏;2)周边区域对城市发展生态支撑作用的研究相对缺乏、认识不够深入;3)对城市与周边区域生态关联作用机制的研究较为缺乏。未来的研究要将城市和区域作为统一整体,进一步完善城市与区域生态关联的理论框架,耦合社会经济的相互作用,定量解析城市与区域的生态关联,为城市与区域的可持续发展提供科学依据。

Understanding the social and ecological connections between cities and surrounding regions for urban and regional sustainability

With the expansion of major cities and development of small towns (i.e.,regional urbanization),cities and their surrounding regions are increasingly facing serious problems,such as environmental pollution,ecological degradation,and resource shortages.This is particularly true in rapidly developing countries such as China.To solve these problems,it is crucially important to better understand the social and ecological connections between cities and their surrounding regions.This is because cities and their surrounding regions are integrated,socially and ecologically.On the one hand,urban sustainability can only be achieved with the support of the surrounding region.Conversely,urban sustainability plays a key role in region sustainability.This paper presents a comprehensive review on the social and ecological connections between cities and surrounding regions,with the goal of enhancing our understanding of the social and ecological linkages between cities and their surrounding regions.We reviewed literature,and loosely grouped studies into three categories:1) direct and indirect (e.g.,through social processes) effects of urban development on ecosystems and environments at urban and regional scales;2) ecosystem services provided by surrounding regions that support the development of cities;and 3) the social,economic,and ecological teleconnections and interactions between the city and its surrounding region.We further summarized and highlighted a few future directions that should be focused on to advance our understanding of the social and ecological connections between cities and regions:1) Most of the studies focused on the (adverse) impacts of urbanization (particularly urban land expansion) on surrounding regions.Few studies have considered the city and its surrounding regions as a coupled system and taken a holistic approach to examine their mutually supportive and interactive connections.Developing a holistic approach that considers the city and its surrounding regions as a coupled socio-ecological system will greatly enhance our understanding of the social and ecological connections between the two areas.2) Most of the previous studies focused on the social and economic linkages between cities and their surrounding regions,but ignored the ecological connections.Future research on the ecological linkages between cities and surrounding regions,and how the ecological linkages contribute to urban and regional sustainability is highly desirable.3) Currently,there are many new frameworks emerging that are potentially useful to understanding the linkages between cities and surrounding regions,such as the teleconnection/tele-coupling framework and the urban-rural continuum framework.However,quantitative approaches and models,as well as experimental case studies,are largely lacking,which warrants future research.