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Arid Land Geography ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (6): 1061-1072.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2023.318

• Regional Development • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Spatiotemporal evolution and driving mechanism of environmental stress of regional development in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

MA Mingde1(), LI Junjie2, XUE Chenhao3   

  1. 1. School of Management/Editorial Office of Journal, North Minzu University, Yinchuan 750021, Ningxia, China
    2. Yinchuan Construction Land Service Centre, Yinchuan 750004, Ningxia, China
    3. College of Geography and Environmental Science, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, Gansu, China
  • Received:2023-06-28 Revised:2023-10-14 Online:2024-06-25 Published:2024-07-09

Abstract:

Environmental stress caused by regional development has emerged as a critical impediment to the high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin. The Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, located in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, holds significant ecological status. This study focuses on the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, establishing an environmental stress evaluation index system and utilizing the entropy method to systematically calculate the environmental stress index (ESI) across various counties in Ningxia. The results show that during 2012—2020, the minimum ESI value in the county level of Ningxia increased from 0.056359 to 0.091005, the maximum value decreased from 0.948896 to 0.911162, and the average ESI value in the county level of Ningxia decreased from 0.56580 to 0.49762. Overall, Ningxia’s environmental stress level has improved, and the local environmental stress is still tight. Moran’s I index analysis showed a significant spatial correlation between environmental stress during 2012—2020, and the spatial spillover effect of regional development on environmental stress increased, with the spatial aggregation effect becoming more obvious. In addition, the Getis-Ord G* index analysis demonstrated that the distribution of hot and cold spots of environmental stress correlated with economic and social development levels. This paper selected a geographically weighted regression model that could better reflect the change in variable regression coefficient with the trend of geographical location for analysis to identify factors affecting the spatial distribution of environmental stress in Ningxia. The results show that population, urbanization, and energy consumption positively affect environmental stress, while industrial structure and land use have negative effects. Therefore, Ningxia should constantly improve population quality, orderly promote the rational distribution of the population in space, implement a new urbanization strategy, and improve urbanization quality. In addition, Ningxia should make technological improvements to energy-intensive and high-polluting industries to reduce pollutant discharge, accelerate the upgrading of the industrial structure, optimize the land use structure, and continuously raise resource utilization efficiency.

Key words: environmental stress, spatiotemporal differentiation, regional development, Ningxia