Abstract:Ecosystem restoration for territorial space is an important measure to implement the strategy of ecological civilization construction. It is vital to scientifically identify key areas of territorial space for ecological restoration, which can help to make policy to maintain the ecosystem integrity. However, how to identify the restoration area is a controversial question in the current territorially spatial planning. In this study, ecological security patterns were employed to identify the key areas of ecological restoration. We followed the paradigm of ecological sources identification-resistance surface construction-corridor extraction to construct the ecological security pattern in Hezhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Four kinds of ecological condition including the ecological protection degree, landscape connectivity, ecological important degree and nature reservation areas were used to identify the ecological sources. Then, A Circuitscape model based on circuit theory was used to extract ecological corridors and build the ecological security pattern. After that, the current density of landscape was used to diagnose ecological pinch points and ecological barriers in ecological corridors, and determined the width of ecological corridors. We also established grading rules to identify key areas of territorial space and formulate spatial strategies for ecological restoration. The results showed that Hezhou City has quite good ecological condition, which can identify 18 ecological sources with a total area of 3656.89 km2. It also needs 37 of ecological corridors to connect the ecological sources with the total length of 639.50 km. We also found that 16 ecological pinch-points covering area of 124.24 km2 need to repair, while 8 ecological pinch points in urgently dangerous condition with area of 45.02 km2. There are 32 ecological barriers with area of 426.56 km2 and 6 ecological barriers in urgently dangerous condition. After comprehensive understanding the land use policy, we carefully design the spatial planning of ecological restoration through the classification and formulation rules. The study can provide a scientific mode for the identification of ecological restoration in territorial space planning.