Correlation between land use and ecological environmental quality changes in the Yellow River Basin supported by the GEE platform

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is essential for establishing ecological civilization and promoting high-quality economic development. This research utilized Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to construct the Remote Sensing Based Ecological Index (RSEI), which could indicate the status of ecological environment quality in a specific region. ArcGIS and GeoDa software were then employed to analyze spatial and temporal changes in land use and RSEI, as well as their relationship within the study area. The findings indicated that the land use dynamic degree was higher in 2000-2010 (0.4) than in 2010-2020 (0.24), suggesting a more judicious and sustainable approach to land resource utilization, and the ecological environmental level was sufficient. During 2010-2020, the area with improved ecological environment quality accounts for about 44% of the total area in the YRB, which mainly due to national policies promoting rural beautification and high-quality development strategies. The ecological quality change of the YRB was significantly correlated with the conversion of land use types. The transformation of grassland into unused land (0.046) and woodland into grassland (0.034) significantly improved the ecological quality, indicating that unused land as an important natural resource plays a crucial role in ecological protection, and restoration of unused land resources in the YRB should be carried out.