Temporal-spatial change of China's coastal ecosystem resilience and driving factors analysis

Abstract

Coastal regions, with both marine and terrestrial characteristics, play an important role in the global ecosystem and their ecological and environmental conditions are of global concern. A better understanding of regional differences in coastal resilience and its drivers facilitates ecosystem management and restoration. In this study, the level of ecological resilience of China's coastal regions from 2000 to 2020 was assessed using a three-pronged resilience assessment framework of resistance, adaptability and resilience, and the key drivers of ecological resilience were identified using geographic probes and geographically weighted regression analyses. The results of the study indicate that: (1) the ecological resilience of China's coastal region is spatially distributed as high resilience in the southern part of the study area and low resilience in the northern part of the study area; (2) the areas with higher rates of change are distributed in the Bohai Bay, Yangtze River estuary and Pearl River estuary; (3) in terms of drivers, economic development factors and environmental protection measures have a relatively large impact on changes in resilience and vary from region to region. The case study provides a systematic and quantitative framework for assessing the resilience of integrated coastal management and sustainable development.