China has experienced rapid urbanization for over 40 years, posing a significant challenge to the ecological environment and urban sustainability, which is especially critical in cities in Western China. To critically measure the impact of ecological security on urban sustainability, we developed a quantitative approach to obtain evaluation results for decision-making. Taking Xi’an, one of the central cities in Western China, as an example, we used the methodology to conduct a quantitative analysis of the impact of regional ecological security on urban sustainability. The driving force–pressure–state–response framework has been used to construct a comprehensive assessment system and the distribution of ecological security index was analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS) software. To understand the level of urban ecological security, the natural breaks classification method was adopted to divide the results into five categories: highly safe, satisfactorily safe, safe, low value safe, unsafe. The results have shown that the ecological security in Xi’an is basically stable, and the overall status is close to the safe status, but there is a significant difference within the research area. According to the assessment results, the impact of ecological security on sustainability of Xi’an is mainly concerning high-density population, high-density water consumption, high per capita energy consumption, low vegetation coverage, and low-density river corridors. In addition, through the quantitative analysis of the relationship between ecological security and terrain, it is observed that the ecological security level distribution of Xi’an decreases from mountains to tablelands to hills and plains. The paper shows that the comprehensive assessment system of urban ecological security established here is effective to identify natural and artificial ecological security factors that threaten urban sustainability.
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