Using ecological security pattern to identify priority protected areas: A case study in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area, China

•We quantify different ecological indicators and obtain ecological security pattern and key regions.•Landscape connectivity is used to identify priority protected areas that meet future requirements.•We quantify the effectiveness of existing protected areas and identify isolated protected areas.•Future conservation measures are proposed from the perspectives of different priority conservation areas. Protected areas (PAs) play a key role in mitigating ecological crises. Currently, priority protected areas (PPAs) focus on biological conservation, and a few studies have considered the connectivity between patches. Few studies have formulated future conservation measures from the two dimensions of ecological security pattern (ESP) and reserve effectiveness. To fill this gap, this study considered the use of the ESP to identify areas that meet future conservation objectives. We take the Wuhan metropolitan area as the research area. We constructed a framework for formulating conservation development plans based on priority protected areas. The framework constructed a complete method system, and we focused on the construction of the evaluation index system based on landscape connectivity. Then, the effectiveness of the PAs could be evaluated, and the PPAs could be identified. The results showed that there were five isolated PAs among the existing PAs. Moreover, the total area of PPAs was 9328.91 km2, and they had high connectivity and ecological value. Due to the low protection rate of PPAs, PPAs are not the main protection target of PAs; thus, we take PPAs as a new area of future PAs. According to our plan, PPAs with different classes will achieve different functions in future protection work. Our framework focuses on achieving sustainable conservation and formulates new environmental protection and land planning measures to balance ecological conservation and urban development. It can provide key information to support the realization of the 2030 vision of sustainable development.