ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
This article is part of the Research TopicInteractive Effects of Climate Change and Human Activities on Plant Productivity in Grassland and Cropland EcosystemsView all 22 articles
Spatiotemporal Interaction and Attribution Analysis of Ecosystem Health and Human Activities in the Daxing'anling Forest–Grassland Ecotone, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Forestry, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
- 2Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Daxing'anling forest-grassland ecotone is a critical ecological barrier in northern China, playing a vital role in regional ecological security. The health of this ecosystem is directly linked to the overall ecological stability of the region. Over the past two decades, intensified regional development has exacerbated human–environment conflicts. However, the spatiotemporal feedback mechanisms between ecosystem health (EHI) and human activity intensity (HAI) remain poorly understood, limiting efforts to optimize both ecological protection and regional development.This study presents a multi-scale Assessment-Coupling-Driving framework. The Vitality-Organization-Resilience-Service (VORS) model is employed to quantify EHI, while multi-source data are integrated to construct the HAI. Spatial statistics and XGBoost-SHAP machine learning techniques are applied to explore the human-environment feedback mechanisms from 2000 to 2023. The results reveal threshold effects in the evolution of the human-environment system, particularly in ecologically vulnerable regions.The findings show that EHI has increased by 25.1%, although significant spatial variation persists. In the northern primary forest region, EHI is notably higher than in the southern urbanized areas, where ecological degradation hotspots are concentrated in the agro-pastoral ecotone. These patterns suggest that urbanization and agricultural expansion are the primary drivers of ecological degradation.HAI has increased by 16.3%, forming a high-in-plains and low-in-mountainous-areas distribution pattern. This confirms that topography significantly influences the spatial distribution of human activities. A significant negative spatial correlation between HAI and EHI (Moran’s I = −0.62) highlights the trade-off between human development and ecosystem health. Coupling coordination degree analysis shows a 6.9% expansion of ecological protection zones, which are characterized by low coordination levels, identifying the region as a core conflict zone requiring urgent governance interventions. In contrast, potential conservation areas account for 48.7% of the total area, underscoring their key role in maintaining the regional ecological security pattern.The XGBoost-SHAP model further quantifies the nonlinear threshold effects of factors such as Potential evapotranspiration (PET), temperature, and GDP. PET and low temperatures are found to suppress EHI, while plant available water enhances ecological stability. When temperatures exceed 0°C, they positively influence EHI, and, in combination with high GDP, promote HAI. However, PET greater than 850 mm suppresses HAI.
Keywords: Coupling coordination degree model, Ecosystem health, Human activity intensity, SHAP model, Vigor-Organization-Resilience-Services(VORS) model
Received: 18 Oct 2025; Accepted: 22 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Pang, 张, Ma and Ma. 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: Xiuzhi Ma
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.