Ecological Sensitivity Assessment of the Southeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau using GIS and AHP—A Case Study of the Nyingchi Region

Abstract: This paper took the Nyingchi area in southeastern Tibet Autonomous Region of China as the research area, and selected five indicators of elevation, slope, slope direction, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and water body as the evaluation system based on the current situation of domestic and foreign research and field investigation. The indicators were analyzed by the AHP method for weighting, and then an ArcGIS overlay analysis was applied. The results show that the ecological sensitivity of the Nyingchi region is generally increasing from the south of Nyingchi to the north of Nyingchi. The northern, western and southwestern parts of Nyingchi are extremely sensitive or highly sensitive, while the southern part is mostly insensitive or mildly sensitive ecologically. The proportions of areas for each sensitivity level are: not sensitive 54.81%, light sensitive 11.97%, moderately sensitive 10.34%, highly sensitive 8.65%, and extremely sensitive 14.23%. The results indicate that the overall ecological sensitivity of the Nyingchi region is low and this region is performing well with respect to ecological environmental protection. This study can provide some suggestions for targeted improvements of the ecological environmental protection in the Nyingchi region and even in the Tibetan Plateau region.