Review and Perspective on Landscape Pattern and Processes at Basin Scale

As an independent and complete ecosystem, the river basin plays a significant role in supporting human economic and social development. Landscape pattern in river basin will not only affect the hydrologic cycle and water use, but also determine the supporting capacity of the watershed on water resources allocation and ecosystem service supply. Since the complexity of the interaction between landscape pattern and process, the coupling mechanism between landscape pattern and process, as well as the optimization path and methodology of landscape pattern have always been the focus in landscape ecology. Based on literature review, the current situation and characteristics of studies on watershed landscape pattern and process are systematically analyzed from two aspects, i.e., the research field and theme, the research methodology. Furtherly, the existing issues and shortcomings in current studies were discussed. It is concluded that three aspects in watershed landscape pattern and process have to be addressed, the spatial coupling features of landscape elements, the coupling mechanism between landscape pattern and process, the spatial linkage across scales. Finally, four important research topics on watershed landscape pattern and process were proposed: (1) landscape information mapping at watershed scale by integrating landscape element features and process; (2) The potential ecosystem service value of the coupling watershed landscape pattern-process and its temp-spatial difference; (3) Evolution of watershed landscape pattern and its potential significance on environmental health maintenance under strong human interference.