Decrypting resilience: The spatiotemporal evolution and driving factors of ecological resilience in the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration

Can a system be reconstructed for greater resilience to complex disturbances? We provide answers to this question by demystifying ecological resilience (ER). We innovatively constructed a "resistant, absorptive, and restorative capacity" framework based on evolutionary resilience theory, the Dagum Gini coefficient, and the panel Tobit model to systematically determine what ER is and how to enhance it. The results indicate that during 2005–2021, minimal longitudinal changes with significant horizontal variations occurred in the ER of the Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration (YRDUA). ER showed an "east strong, west weak" pattern, with average values from 0.124 to 0.665. The ER of Southern Jiangsu ranked high, while that of the seven cities in Anhui ranked low. The inequity of ER showed an initial increase followed by a fluctuating decreasing trend; the overall average Gini coefficient was 0.262. The intra-regional differences showed Zhejiang > Jiangsu > Anhui, with a contribution rate of 55.46%. Green patents and the proportion of cultivated land were the most significant positive and negative driving forces for ER, respectively. Additionally, when these factors worked together, they increased the explanatory power of ER, primarily via nonlinear enhancement. Urbanization rate and green patents enhanced the joint action of driving forces. The contribution of our study is to compensate for the lack of theoretical traceability in previous studies and provide an inspiring analytical framework for ER.