Spatial Alignment and Mismatch Between Ecosystem Resilience Potential and Outdoor Recreation Suitability in Giant Panda National Park

Abstract

China’s national parks must protect ecological integrity while enabling appropriate public access, yet recreation suitability and ecological resilience potential are commonly assessed separately. Taking Giant Panda National Park as a case study, this research develops a contemporaneous 2023 spatial assessment that integrates an operational Ecosystem Resilience Index (ERI), a MaxEnt-derived Outdoor Recreation Suitability Index (ORSI), bivariate spatial association, and protection-first management zoning. ERI represents relative ecosystem resilience potential through resistance-related condition, adaptability-related condition, and recovery-related potential. ORSI was estimated from 102 spatially thinned recreation occurrences and ten predictors. Two geographically separated holdouts produced a mean test AUC of 0.960 and mean maximum test TSS of 0.907. ERI and ORSI exhibited a positive global bivariate association (Moran’s I = 0.240, permutation p = 0.001), while local LISA identified neighbourhood-scale departures from this park-wide tendency. Alternative component weights retained strong agreement with the equal-weight ERI (Spearman ρ = 0.972–0.986). Exact park-boundary intersections assigned 6.71% of the analyzed area to potential conflict, 10.64% to strict management, and 13.13% to low-impact recreation assessment. This protection-first framework reveals where park-wide alignment masks local management mismatches and provides an updateable basis for site verification and monitoring.