Riverine wetland dynamics and health assessment: A case study in the urban agglomerations along the Yellow River in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

Riverine wetland is one of the important cityscapes along rivers, featuring powerful eco-hydrological regulations in safeguarding urban security and serving its quality. Over the past several decades, intensified climate change, together with the upgraded human activities, have deeply disturbed riverine wetland worldwide and caused variations in the amount and pattern, which might lead to negative effects on wetland ecosystem health (WEH), thus threaten the sustainability of the riverine urban agglomerations. To better understand the mechanism of the above effectiveness, the Riverine Urban Agglomerations along the Yellow River in China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (RUAN) was taken as an example in the present study. First, by establishing an object-oriented remote sensing image classification system based on Classification and Regression Tree (CART), riverine wetland distribution in years of 2000, 2009 and 2018 were determined for a two-Stage (ST-I: 2000–2009, ST-II: 2009–2018) comparative research. Second, the transition matrix and landscape index were used to measure the spatiotemporal dynamics of the riverine wetland in the two stages. Third, a Pressure-State-Response (P-S-R) model, together with its index system, was constructed to comprehensively assess the WEH in there. Results revealed that: (1) Wetlands in RUAN are dominated by the artificial ones, presenting an overall increase in area during the statistical period, varying with different trends in the two stages. Conversion between the wetlands and the non-wetlands were found frequent during the urbanization, leading to remarkable changes in wetland patterns in space. (2) Rivers are important and basic in forming riverine landscape in RUAN, the natural wetlands increased during the statistical period. In general, wetland patches and diversity increased, shapes of that became homogenized. Accordingly, the aggregation of wetlands decreased and the fragmentation of that worsened. (3) Riverine wetlands in most of RUAN experienced an increase of external pressure and a deterioration of state, showing an overall degradation. Meanwhile, the WEH was determined more by the fundamental state of itself, the external disturbance seemed function less. Above findings confirmed the vulnerability of riverine wetlands during urbanization in an arid circumstance. It is worthy of strengthening the protection of existing wetlands and minimizing or eliminating the conversion, to ensure the WEH and serve the sustainability of riverine urban agglomerations.