Impacts of urbanization on the spatiotemporal evolution of ecological resilience in the Plateau Lake Area in Central Yunnan, China

The Plateau Lake Area in Central Yunnan has undergone agglomerated socio-economic development. At the same time, its fragile ecosystems, complex ecological problems, and rapid urbanization have continued to challenge ecological security and led to prominent contradictions between protection and development. Herein, the natural geographic information and socio-economic kilometer grid data associated with the Plateau Lake Area in Central Yunnan were used to measure the ecological resilience (ER) and urbanization level (UL) in 2000, 2010, and 2019, and the spatial–temporal features of ER were elucidated. The impacts of urbanization on ER at the raster and zoning scales by using the optimal parameters-based geographical detector (OPGD) model. The results indicate that ER in the central urban areas of Kunming continued to decrease, with the plateau lake regions showing low ER. Furthermore, urbanization hindered ER, and its influence increased significantly from 2010 to 2019. Although the negative effect of land urbanization was the most significant, aggregation of the population and economy did not inevitably lead to low ER. The dominant drivers of ER varied across districts and counties, depending on their development status. Based on these results, strategies to enhance ER under differentiated development paths were explored to serve as a decision-making foundation for territorial ecological governance.