Landscape pattern characteristics of scenic byway in the Grass Skyline of Bashang Grassland, Hebei Pro-vince, China.

Exploring the evolution of landscape patterns along scenic byways and future development trends is beneficial for coordinating ecological security protection and scientifically guiding tourism development. With the Grass Skyline of Bashang Grassland, Hebei Province as an example, we constructed a landscape pattern indicator system for scenic byways, and used Fragstats, optimal parameters-based geographical detector, and ARIMA-MOP-PLUS models to compare the evolutionary differences in landscape patterns before (2000-2010) and after the construction (2010-2020). We further examined the driving factors of post-construction evolution, and predicted landscape pattern changes under four scenarios for 2035: tourism-economic-priority development, inertial development, ecological-priority development, and ecotourism development. Results showed that cultivated land, forest, and grassland were the main landscape types within the 5 km buffer zone along the Grass Skyline scenic byway. Compared to the pre-construction period, the overall landscape connectivity in the corridor area decreased, shape complexity and distribution evenness increased, fragmentation intensified, and disturbance degree increased by 4.6% during the post-construction period. Tourism development and road transportation had the strongest impacts on construction land expansion, with a contribution rate of 60.0%. Topographic-soil and socio-economic factors were the main driving forces for spatial differentiation of landscape disturbance degree, with a <i>q</i>-value of 39.9%. The interaction between slope and other factors was the strongest. By 2035, ecological-priority development and ecotourism development scenarios showed lower disturbance degrees than other scenarios, at 0.52 and 0.53, respectively. The ecotourism development scenario reduced the disturbance degree distribution range by 3.21 km² by balancing the proportion of ecological land and construction land. Our results could provide decision support for optimizing tourism resource allocation along the Grass Skyline and mitigating the negative impacts of tourism development on the environment of the Bashang Plateau.