| As an important ecological barrier on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains, the Ebinur Lake basin is increasingly affected by both natural conditions and human activities, and ecological and environmental problems are becoming more serious. In this paper, Ebinur Lake was selected for study, and we evaluated the ecological vulnerability of the basin in 2000, 2010 and 2020, and quantitatively analyzed the driving forces. The aim of the study was to provide theoretical support for the conservation and restoration of the ecological environment, and the rational development and utilization of the basin’s ecological resources. Eleven indicators of both natural and human factors were selected to develop an ecological vulnerability evaluation system for the Ebinur Lake Basin, including elevation, slope, slope direction, vegetation cover, annual precipitation, surface temperature, river network density, soil type, land use type, GDP per capita and population density. The weight of each indicator was determined by combining subjective and objective weights using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), entropy weight method and linear weighting method. The ecological vulnerability integrated index (EVII) of the study area for each year was then determined and the ecological vulnerability level of the Ebinur Lake Basin was evaluated. The spatial and temporal ecological vulnerability of the study area decreased slightly over the 20 year study period, especially in the northern area, decreasing from 36.67% from 2000 to 2010 to 11.20% from 2010 to 2020. The EVII of the study area in 2000, 2010 and 2020 were 5.2, 4.7 and 5.1, decreasing rapidly for the first decade and then increasing back to just less than the initial value. The overall ecological vulnerability of the Ebinur Lake Basin was mild to moderate over 85.53% of the study area. The driving forces of ecological vulnerability in the basin were analyzed by geodetector analysis. The spatial distribution of ecological environment vulnerability was found to be the result of multiple interacting factors, but the interaction of vegetation cover and land use had the strongest influence on regional ecological vulnerability, with specific explanatory power values (q) of 0.592 in 2000, 0.721 in 2010 and 0.711 in 2020. |
