Objective  The relationship between land-use changes and regional habitat quality is an important issue in land science. The impact of land use changes on habitat quality was revealed in this study to provide reference for the construction of regional ecological civilization and territorial ecological security pattern.

  Method  Taking Shandong Province as an example, based on remote images, this article explored the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of habitat quality in Shandong during 2000-2018 with the methods of InVEST model and spatial analysis with GIS. In this study, the habitat quality was divided into five level, including the highest, higher, moderate, lower and lowest.

  Result  The results showed that: (1) The overall habitat quality of Shandong Province was at moderate level, where there were significant spatial differences during 2000-2018. It presented a spatial pattern of high in central and eastern regions and low in western regions. Habitat quality areas of the lowest and lower grades tended to be mainly distributed in the regions along lakes and coastal areas as well as urban fringe areas, while habitat quality areas of the highest and higher grades appeared the characteristics of mountainous and hilly agglomeration. The areas with Habitat quality of grade IV and V were mainly distributed in eastern peninsula region and central mountainous and hilly areas. What is more, habitat quality areas with moderate level were widely distributed throughout the province, which were most concentrated in the western and northern plains. (2) Habitat quality indices decreased from 0.558 to 0.538 in Shandong Province during 2000-2018, and there was relative significant disparity with different habitat quality levels. The changes of habitat quality mainly showed the expansion of habitat quality areas with the lowest and highest levels and degradation of habitat quality areas with lower, higher and moderate levels. The improvement areas of habitat quality mainly occurred in the urban fringe areas of Jinan, Zibo, Weifang, Qingdao, Linyi City and so on, while the degradation areas were mainly located in the coastal areas of Binzhou, Dongying and Weifang.

  Conclusion  The spatial and temporal changes of habitat quality in Shandong are significantly affected by land use changes. The habitat quality of farmland, forestland and construction land appears a degradation trend, while the habitat quality of grassland, water area and unused land is continuously improved. The habitat quality improvement areas mainly occur in the conversion of farmland to forest land and grassland, as well as the conversion of unused land to forestland, water area and grassland. These results will provide references for the construction of regional ecological civilization and territorial ecological security pattern.