REMOTE SENSING EVALUATION OF ECOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT OF ANQING CITY BASED ON REMOTE SENSING ECOLOGICAL INDEX

Abstract. Figuring out the regional ecological environment quality and ecological change is critical for ecological environment monitoring and management and urban construction planning. Based on the remote sensing ecological index (RESI), we evaluate the ecological quality and ecological change from 1999 to 2019 of Anqing city. Multi-temporal Landsat images are used to extract the four indicators of humidity, vegetation, heat and dryness, respectively. Then the RSEI is calculated by principal component analysis. The results show that the ecological quality of Anqing city declined from 1999 to 2019 and then grew slowly from 2009 to 2019. The eco-environmental quality of Anqing city dropped slightly from 1999 to 2019, and the regions with worse quality grades exceeded those becoming better. Particularly, we find that from 1999 to 2009, the area where the ecological quality became better made up 18.31% of the urban area, while the worse ecological area accounted for 29.68% of the urban area; from 2009 to 2019, the area of improved ecological environment reached 24.35%, while the area of degraded quality constituted 41.36%. Land-use changes dominated eco-environmental quality. The areas of poor eco-environmental quality expanded in residential regions and eco-environmental quality of mountainous area improved since returning cultivated land in steep hills into forest. The RSEI results are expected to provide a quantitative foundation for planning sustainable development and the rational use of resources in Anqing city.