Optimising the relationship between ecological protection and human development through functional zoning

Functional zoning is a kind of spatial organization mechanism used in national parks to manage the relationship between various stakeholders. Exploring ways to reconcile and eliminate conflict patches between ecological protection and community development in national parks is important for many developing countries in further promoting the target 12 of sustainable consumption and production in SDGs(ONUs' Sustainable Development Goals).We innovatively propose a combination method for optimising the functional zoning of national parks, taking the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon national park (YZGCNP) as an example, under a new perspective of reconciling conflicts between national parks and human activities. Following are the major findings: (1) Based on the overlay analysis of habitat quality and human activity intensity, the conflict patches can be identified, and then can be classified into five different levels from 1 to 5 by using the difference matrix, based on the objective of ecological protection and conflict coordination. (2) The trends of a control scenario (eliminating patch conflicts) and no-control scenario (uncontrolled development) were projected to 2035 according to the management objectives of the different zones. Comparing the two scenarios, it was found that the area of patches with the most significant conflicts was reduced by 1102 km2 in the control scenario, and the area of patches with the highest habitat quality and lowest human activity increased by 852 km2. (3) An analysis of the effectiveness of the InVEST-HFI-CaMarkov model combination concluded that the link between models is rational and can successfully identify and eliminate the conflicts between ecological protection and human activities in national parks. This study provides a new perspective and an applied paradigm for the combination of methods for functional zoning of national parks, which can serve as a reference for their sustainable development.