Multi-Scale Analysis of Green Space for Human Settlement Sustainability in Urban Areas of the Inner Mongolia Plateau, China

Green space in intra-urban regions plays a significant role in improving the human habitat environment and regulating the ecosystem service in the Inner Mongolian Plateau of China, the environmental barrier region of North China. However, a lack of multi-scale studies on intra-urban green space limits our knowledge of human settlement environments in this region. In this study, a synergistic methodology, including the main process of linear spectral decomposition, vegetation-soil-impervious surface area model, and artificial digital technology, was established to generate a multi-scale of green space (i.e., 15-m resolution intra-urban green components and 0.5-m resolution park region) and investigate multi-scale green space characteristics as well as its ecological service in 12 central cities of the Inner Mongolian Plateau. Results showed that: (1) Total urban areas and urban green space across the studied cities were 1249.87 km² and 295.40 km², indicating that the average proportion of green space to urban areas was 24.03%. (2) The proportion of green space to urban areas ranged from 17.09% to 32.17%, and the proportion of parks’ green space to green space ranged from 5.55% to 50.20%, indicating a wide range of quantitative discrepancies. (3) In different climate regions, there were higher proportions of urban/park green space in arid/semi-arid areas to reduce the impacts of dry climate on human settlements; by contrast, lower green space in humid areas mainly displayed a scattered pattern because of the relatively lower influence of climate pressure. (4) Green coverage was an essential indicator of the “Beautiful China” project, and its ratio within 500-m ecological service zones from parks across all cities was 46.14%, which indicated that the ratio of residential land and green space was close to 1:1. Overall, urban/park green space patterns in urban areas adapted to the different climate features in the Inner Mongolian Plateau. For better human settlement sustainability across all studied cities, more greening patches and ecological corridors should be designed in the lower green space regions of the Inner Mongolian Plateau.