Geospatial land surface-based thermal scenarios for wetland ecological risk assessment and its landscape dynamics simulation in Bayanbulak Wetland, Northwestern China

Modifications to land surface thermal regime by climate change and land cover/land-use change may influence ecosystem structure and function in arid landscapes, but relevant studies are scarce. Large changes in the land surface thermal regime can disturb the hydro-ecological integrity of these landscapes. Thus, it is important to assess landscape change and ecological risk to promote arid landscape sustainability. This study predicted the landscape change and quantified the Bayanbulak ecological risk evolution through a susceptibility-hazard assessment system. CA–Markov model was used to simulate the landscape change, while ERA model that builds the susceptibility-hazard indices rapport was applied to evaluate the Bayanbulak wetland ecological risk using 30 m remotely sensed data. Findings unveiled that modifications in water, meadow, and marshes are predicted to decline at a rate of 39.3, 6.32, 23.98% in 2069 respectively. As wetland hazard, the LST average increased from 20 to 22 °C with a maximum value of 35.2 °C from 1994 to 2019. Likewise, wetland susceptibility mean value increased from 1.10 to 1.20, a growth rate of 9.09%. Though the decline in high-risk zones, moderate risk zones drastically augmented at the extent of 70.5% while low risk and no risk zones declined with a reduction rate of 18.9 and 95.8% respectively. Overall observations exhibited that Bayanbulak ecological risk is slightly evolving. Bayanbulak is a pool of ecosystem services. By highlighting its ecological risk evolution, we call upon the focus on factors driving LST increment and adopt climatic adaptation measures of aqua-terrestrial ecosystems for Bayanbulak management.