Climate change and rapid urbanization bring natural and anthropogenetic disturbance to the urban ecosystem, damaging the sustainability and resilience of cities. Evaluation of urban ecological resilience and an investigation of its impact mechanisms are of great importance to sustainable urban management. Therefore, taking the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration (BTHUA) region in China as a study area, this study builds an evaluation index to assess urban ecological resilience and its spatial patterns with the resilience surrogate of net primary production during 2000–2020. The evaluation index is constructed from two dimensions, including the sensitivity and adaptability of urban ecosystems, to capture the two key mechanisms of resilience, namely resistance and recovery. Resilience-influencing factors including biophysical and socio-economic variables are analyzed with the multiple linear regression model. The results show that during 2000–2020, the spatial pattern of urban ecological resilience in the BTHUA is characterized by high resilience in the northwest and relatively low resilience in the southeast. High resilience areas account for 40% of the whole region, mainly contributed by Zhangjiakou and Chengde city in Hebei Province, which is consistent with the function orientation of the BTH region in its coordinated development. Along with urbanization in this region, ecological resilience decreases with increased population and increases with GDP growth; this indicates that, although population expansion uses resources, causes pollution and reduces vegetation coverage, with economic growth and technological progress, the negative ecological impact could be mitigated, and the coordinated development of social economy and ecological environment could eventually be reached. Our findings are consistent with mainstream theories examining the ecological impact of socio-economic development such as the Environmental Kuznets Curve, Porter Hypothesis, and Ecological Modernization theories, and provide significant references for future urbanization, carbon neutrality, resilience building, and urban ecological management in China.

Water availability is at the core of sustainable socioeconomic development and ecological conservation along with global climate and land use changes, especially in the areas that experience water problems. This study investigated the impacts of land use change on surface runoff and water yield with scenario-based land use change in the upper and middle reaches of the Heihe River Basin, the second largest inland river basin in the arid region of northwestern China. Firstly, three land use structure scenarios were established, with different water utilization ratio levels (low-level, middle-level and high-level water utilization ratios). Then the spatial pattern of land uses was simulated with the Dynamic of Land System (DLS). Thereafter, the simulated land use data were used as the input data to drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, keeping other input data unchanged to isolate the land use change impacts on surface runoff and water yield. The results showed that the forestland and grassland will expand along with the increase in water utilization ratio. The quick-response surface runoff would decrease significantly due to forest and grassland expansion, which may cause an overall decreasing trend of the water yield. This indicated the unreasonable allocation of water resources may exert negative impacts on the water yield even if the water utilization ratio is increased; therefore, water resources should be reasonably allocated for different land use demand, which is critical for sustainable development. The results of this study will be informative to decision makers for sustainable water resource and land management when facing land use change and an increasing demand for water resources in the Heihe River Basin.

Land is one of the important input resources in a highly populous and land-scarce country such as Bangladesh. When different factors change (such as, geophysical, proximity, socioeconomic and climatic), there are dramatic changes in the spatial pattern of land uses. Thus, shedding light on the dynamics of land use and land cover changes has great importance for finding the changing pattern of land use in Bangladesh. In the present study, we predicted the land use and land cover changes from 2010 to 2030 under baseline, ecological protection priority and economic growth scenarios in Bangladesh. On this basis, we applied a previously developed Dynamics of Land Systems (DLS) model to simulate the changes in land uses according to the driving mechanisms. The findings indicate that cultivated land declines and built-up area expansion is common under all three scenarios. However, the future land use demand shows differences under different scenarios. The results under the ecological protection priority scenario shows that forest area and grassland will increase more, while under economic growth scenario, built-up area will expand dramatically in the future. The present research results furnish meaningful decision-making information for planners to conserve and/or exploit land resources in Bangladesh in a more sustainable manner.

Ecological environment quality and resilience assessment is an important prerequisite for ensuring the coordination and stability of socio-economic development and eco-environment protection. Remote sensing technology has provided new approaches for quantitatively evaluating regional ecological environment quality and resilience rapidly, accurately, and objectively. Taking the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREBML) as an example, to assess ecological environment quality, this study calculated the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) based on the Google Earth Engine using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data with a spatial resolution of 500 m during 2000–2020. An evaluation index to assess ecological resilience and its spatial pattern based on the RSEI of 2000–2020 was then constructed. The evaluation index was constructed from two dimensions, including the sensitivity and adaptability of the RSEI. Finally, this study identified key factors that affect ecological residence based on a structural equation model. The results showed that the overall RSEI was at moderate and good levels in the YREBML during 2000–2020, accounting for more than 85% of the total area. Its spatial characteristics showed that the RSEI was higher in the middle reaches than in the lower reaches of the YREB, and higher in the south than in the north. The overall RSEI in the YREBML showed a decreasing trend during 2000–2020, with 54.36% of the region improving and 45.64% declining. Areas with declining RSEI were concentrated in Anhui, while the increasing RSEI was observed in Zhejiang. In addition, the spatial pattern of ecological resilience was characterized by high resilience in the north and east, and low resilience in the south and west. High resilience areas accounted for 40.48% of the YREBML, mainly contributed by Jiangxi and Hunan provinces. The driving factors analysis results indicated that economic development, natural disaster risk, and environmental pollution would further affect ecological resilience of urban systems. This study provides more scientific and effective data support for ecological environment monitoring and governance.