Landscape ecology planning of a scenery district based on a characteristic evaluation index system—a case study of the Wuyishan scenery district

Landscape ecology planning of a scenery district is the typical application of landscape ecology principles and methods. It focuses on the spatial pattern, ecological process, and especially the relationship between human activities and landscape characteristics in a scenery district. In this paper, the spatial pattern of the Wuyishan Scenery District was studied at two scale levels:1) landscape elements and 2)the whole landscape. The change in spatial patterns for 10 types of landscapes from 2001 to 2006 was analyzed using diversity, dominance, evenness, and fragmentation. According to widely accepted landscape ecological classification principles, a new characteristic evaluation index system for landscape ecological suitability evaluation for a scenery district, including representativeness, stability, coordination, particularity, ornamental value, society, and gradient, was applied to assess its ecological suitability by the analytic hierarchy process and the composite evaluation index (CEI) was further calculated. By CEI, the ecological suitability of the scenery district was divided into three classes, including urgent landscape, normal landscape, and ideal landscape.