Spatiotemporal Evolution and Mechanisms of Habitat Quality in Nature Reserve Land: A Case Study of 18 Nature Reserves in Hubei Province

The contribution of biodiversity to the global economy, human survival, and welfare has been significantly increasing. However, nature reserves have long been subject to a sequence of ecological environmental issues caused by human activities. Therefore, quantitatively assessing the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of habitat quality due to land use changes and exploring the mechanisms of potential influencing factors can provide a scientific basis for the stable and sustainable development of natural ecosystems. This study aims to analyze 18 nature reserves in Hubei Province to identify the spatiotemporal evolution of habitat quality within these reserves and to explore the influence of multifactorial dynamics from nature, humanity, and policy on this evolution. Initially, the study utilizes land use transition matrices and land use dynamic degree methods to understand the spatiotemporal characteristics of land conversion within the study area. Subsequently, it analyzes the spatiotemporal changes in habitat quality from 2000–2020 based on the InVEST model and tools like spatial autocorrelation (Moran’s I) in ArcGIS. Finally, 14 potential influencing factors are selected from natural environment, socio-human, and policy regulation aspects and analyzed in the Geodetector software to understand the factors affecting the spatiotemporal evolution of habitat quality. The results show that, during the study period, the land area of 18 nature reserves in Hubei Province increased from 2000 to 2020, while the water area decreased. There were slight increases in farmland, construction land, and forest land, with significant decreases in grassland and water areas. This reveals the erosion of water bodies due to artificial lake filling during rapid urbanization, leading to a decline in overall habitat quality within the reserves and a gradual increase in spatial heterogeneity. Among the influencing factors, single-factor influences such as land use intensity and distance to county roads and slopes have a strong negative linear relationship with habitat quality, with land use intensity being the most significant human activity factor. The interaction strength among different types of influencing factors in the bivariate interaction detection results is ranked as follows: the interaction between natural geographical and socio-human factors > the interaction within socio-human factors > the interaction within natural geographical factors. This study has diverged from the past focus on the selection of a single continuous natural reserve as the empirical subject. Consequently, it allows for an integrated analysis of physical geographical dimensions such as locational topography with socio-cultural and policy elements including land use and transportation facilities, thereby facilitating a multifactorial assessment of the interactive impacts on habitat quality.