Coupling characteristics of ecological and poverty in typical karst area: case study of 9000 provincial level poor villages in Guizhou Province

The ecological environment and poor areas have strongly spatial consistency, analyzing the coupling relationship and interaction mechanism between ecology and poverty is an important prerequisite for achieving ecological restoration and targeted poverty alleviation in poor areas. This article takes the Guizhou plateau, the center of south China karst, as the research object, and built an index system to measure the multi-dimensional poverty and ecological environment quality of poor villages. Using the coupling coordination degree model and the hot spot analysis method, the coupling relationship between the ecological environment and poverty of 9000 provincial poor villages in Guizhou Province is analyzed, and the types of poor villages are classified. The results show that the multi-dimensional poverty index is high in the south, north and northwest of Guizhou plateau and the ecological environment fragility index as a whole tends to be higher in the west and lower in the east. The spatial distribution patterns of them are significantly different and they only overlap in points. The coupling degree between the ecological environment and poverty is between 0.29-0.56, mainly with slight and light coupling degree. The ecological environment does not contribute much to the causes of poverty, accounting for only about 9.5%, and 69.3% of the poor villages in Guizhou are good ecological-general poverty type. In poverty alleviation and development, Guizhou should strengthen the economic development of poor villages in the east and strengthen the ecological restoration in the west according to the coupling relationship between the ecology and poverty.