ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Ecol. Evol.

Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1586301

This article is part of the Research TopicAdvancing Nature-Based Solutions to Address the Impacts of Climate Change within the Global SouthView all articles

Coupled coordination analysis and driving factors of "Water-Carbon-Ecology" system in the Yellow River Basin

Provisionally accepted
Jinhang  LiJinhang Li1Yuping  HanYuping Han2*Mengdie  ZhaoMengdie Zhao1Zhuo  JiangZhuo Jiang1
  • 1North China University of Water Conservancy and Electric Power, Zhengzhou, China
  • 2Zhejiang Water Conservancy and Hydropower College, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Aiming at the increasingly serious problem of water resources shortage and ecological environment deterioration in the world, this study takes 9 provinces and regions in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) as the research objects, and constructs a multi-dimension assessment framework of Water-carbon-ecology (W-C-E) system based on water resources, carbon emissions and ecosystem data from 2002 to 2017. The analysis is innovatively carried out at three progressive levels: first, the independent abundance of each system is assessed, then the coordination between the two systems is examined, and finally the overall robustness of the three systems is measured. Based on this framework, the water-carbon-ecological coupling index (WCENI) is proposed as a comprehensive evaluation index, and the coupling mechanism of the system is deeply analyzed by combining the obstacle degree model and the geographical detector model. The results show that: in terms of time dimension, the overall WCENI increased significantly from 0.3371 to 0.3571 during the study period, and the system coordination index and robustness index showed a steady growth trend. In terms of spatial dimension, there are significant differences in sub-system abundance among provinces and regions, among which Henan Province ranks first with an average WCENI value of 0.3995. The mechanism analysis showed that there was obvious synergistic enhancement effect among the driving factors, and the interaction intensity was significantly higher than that of the single factor, and the per capita water consumption (13.82% obstacle degree) was identified as the key limiting factor restricting the coordinated development of the system. This study not only provides a new analytical framework for understanding the complex human-land system coupling mechanism, but also provides a scientific basis for the implementation of ecological protection and high-quality development strategies in the Yellow River Basin, especially emphasizing the core role of optimizing water resources management in promoting regional sustainable development.

Keywords: Yellow River Basin 1, Water-Carbon-Ecology 2, Coupled coordination 3, Driving factors 4, WCENI 5

Received: 11 Mar 2025; Accepted: 14 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Li, Han, Zhao and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yuping Han, Zhejiang Water Conservancy and Hydropower College, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

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