The resilience of urban agglomerations (UAs) is recognized because of their ability to withstand, adapt to, and recover from natural disasters and social threats. However, limited information on the resilience of specific urban agglomerations may hinder their sustainable development. The emerging concept of Social–Ecological–Technological system (SETS) resilience presents a novel framework for understanding and evaluating the resilience of UAs. Taking the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban agglomeration (BTHUA) as a case study, we constructed a comprehensive resilience assessment framework. By incorporating the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model, modified gravity model, standard deviation ellipse, and obstacle degree model, we systematically evaluated the BTHUA’s SETS resilience. The results show that from 2010 to 2022, both the SETS resilience and its CCD in the BTHUA improved significantly. All the cities reached the coordination stage, with CCD values exceeding 0.6. The key cities enhanced their influence on the surrounding cities, resulting in a more robust and interconnected intercity resilience network. However, the BTHUA still confronts challenges in resource endowment, technological innovation, and public services, which warrant a more integrated and systematic approach to enhance regional SETS resilience.

A scientifically robust evaluation system for ecological products value realisation is urgently needed in China. Approaches that rely solely on objective indicators face significant challenges due to data limitations and regional heterogeneity. This study innovatively constructed an experts’ perceived effectiveness evaluation scale for ecological products value realisation, establishing a dual mechanism of “objective data + expert experience calibration” and covering the entire chain of “ecological background–economic conversion–social well-being–benefit feedback”. This framework was applied to the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region, with results indicating that the perceived effectiveness index for value realisation of material-supply-oriented ecological products (MSEPs), regulatory service-oriented ecological products (RSEPs), and cultural service-oriented ecological products (CSEPs) was 0.7054, 0.6482, and 0.6052, respectively. Significant regional differences exist. Beijing holds a central and leading role, while effectiveness in the northern mountainous areas of Hebei Province is stronger than in the central and southern regions. Regions with weaker performance should prioritise leadership strategies over comprehensive development, as disparities arising from regional differentiation call for more sophisticated coordination mechanisms. The study offers new insights for policy decision-making and optimisation, enhancing both the applicability and precision of evaluation methods. Nonetheless, the designed scales remain exploratory and warrant verification through a broader empirical basis.

Increasing precipitation variability has been tightly coupled to livestock grazing through direct impacts on vegetation productivity in rangeland ecosystems. However, where and to what extent such impacts occur has not been quantified systematically at the regional scale; thus, adaptive grazing management is plagued by this knowledge gap. Hence, using 20 years of precipitation, rangeland productivity, and livestock density data across Tibet, we assessed long-term precipitation variability impacts on alpine rangeland grazing, specifically highlighting variations in intra- and inter-annual precipitation variability. We showed that the precipitation concentration index (PCI) and coefficient of variation in precipitation (CVP) both increased significantly across Tibet over the past two decades, especially in the western region. On the contrary, grazing intensity (GI) in most rangeland areas markedly declined over the same period. Moreover, we found that GI is highly responsive to PCI and CVP for the alpine steppe, but interestingly, only PCI is significantly associated with GI for the alpine meadow. Furthermore, the Granger causality test indicates an extremely significant causality between GI and PCI, further highlighting that PCI was a remarkable determinant of rangeland grazing over the last two decades. Notably, we statistically identified rangelands with higher precipitation variability that experienced intensive livestock grazing, specifically, GI responded positively to CVP and PCI. In conclusion, our findings provide novel support for the increasing precipitation variability impacts on rangeland grazing over time across Tibet, especially the intra-annual variation. Thus, we advocate the implementation of adaptive grazing management, such as excluding and minimizing grazing for the alpine rangeland ecosystem under higher precipitation variability.

Habitat fragmentation and wetland degradation caused by urban expansion pose a serious threat to regional ecological security, and ecological network (EN) optimization has been widely acknowledged as a conservation strategy for enhancing ecological resilience. However, previous studies on EN optimization are relatively homogeneous in their methods and perspectives, which, to some extent, hinders the protection of wetland systems as a means to improve the EN resilience. In this study, taking the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region as a case study, we integrated wetland restoration into the framework of EN optimization, established a high-performance wetland conservation system contributing to overall ecological resilience, and assessed the resilience of the optimized EN under disturbance scenarios. We identified that the initial EN had 145 ecological sources and 346 ecological corridors. With the addition of 58 wetland stepping stones, optimized EN 1 saw its corridor count increase to 510, which markedly enhanced its connectivity and improved its structural resilience threshold. By contrast, the establishment of wetland buffer zones has led to a predominant increase in functional resilience threshold in optimized EN 2. Moreover, both optimizations elevated the overall resilience threshold, with the highest value (0.596) achieved by integrating wetland nature reserve protection and stepping stone addition. These findings provide methodological support for introducing wetland conservation into EN optimization at the landscape level and a reference for designing reasonable ecological corridors.