Land Use Conflict Identification Coupled with Ecological Protection Priority in Jinan City, China

Land use conflicts exacerbate soil erosion and reduce biodiversity, which is detrimental to sustainable development. Multiple methods such as multi-criteria evaluation and landscape pattern indexes can identify land use conflicts, but few studies conform to the concept of green development. The concept of green development gives priority to ecological protection and coordinates the relationship between production development, food production and ecological protection to achieve sustainable development. Taking Jinan City (China) as the study area, we identified the ecological source areas by evaluating the importance of ecosystem service functions and ecological sensitivity, then extracted and optimized the ecological corridor network (using the minimum cumulative resistance model and gravity model), and constructed the ecological security pattern. Spatial overlay analysis of cultivated land, construction land, and the ecological security pattern was performed to identify the types and intensity of land use conflicts. Spatially, we found that ecological land was in more serious conflict with cultivated land than construction land. Different types of land use conflicts have significant differences in spatial distribution. The key to land use conflict mediation in Jinan City is to balance food security with the improvements in the quality of the ecological environment. Hence, it is necessary to delineate the main functional zones and formulate tailored land use conflict mediation strategies in each zone. The method for land use conflict identification proposed here follows the principle of giving priority to ecological protection, providing a scientific reference for the utilization and protection of territorial space in other similar areas.