Linking Ecosystem Risk, Health, Services to Ecological Security Assessment in the Yellow River Basin: Spatiotemporal Dynamics and Nonlinear Driving Characteristics

Abstract

A scientific assessment of ecological security (ES) and its nonlinear mechanism for key driving factors in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) is of great significance for ecological protection and sustainable development. This study proposes an ES assessment framework, which links ecosystem risk (ER), ecosystem health (EH), and ecosystem services (ESS). We applied this framework to reveal the YRB's ES characteristics from 2000 to 2023, and explored the reliability of the assessment results. By coupling the XGBoost‐SHAP model, we identified the dominant driving factors of ES and quantified their nonlinear response relationships as well as key thresholds. The results indicated that under the comprehensive effect of significant decline in ER, overall improvement in EH and ESS in the YRB, the ES level showed a steady upward trend, with a stable pattern of high in the south and low in the north, and significant spatial positive correlation characteristics. The forest and grassland proportion, precipitation, vegetation coverage, and the construction land proportion are the dominant driving factors affecting ES, and each driving factor exhibited clear threshold characteristics in its impact on ES. Among them, the beneficial effects of the forest and grassland proportion, precipitation, and vegetation coverage on ES significantly increased when exceeding the thresholds of 49.6%, 512.2 mm, and 67.2%, respectively. The ecological impact of construction land proportion becomes negative when exceeding the threshold of 10.5%, showing a coercing effect. Our research not only provides key control objects and threshold basis for the ES management in the YRB, but also provides a robust framework for other similar regional ES research.