Ecological resilience of three major urban agglomerations in China from the “environment–society” coupling perspective

• A new framework is constructed for measuring the ecological resilience. • The spatial and temporal characteristics of ecological resilience are depicted. • The spatial associations of ecological resilience are deconstructed. • The ecological status of cities is evaluated. Three major urban agglomerations in China are considered to construct a framework for measuring ecological resilience from the perspective of the “environment–society” coupling; the spatial and temporal characteristics of ecological resilience are clarified, and the spatial associations of ecological resilience within urban agglomerations are deconstructed. The following conclusions are obtained: (1) The Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region lags behind the other two in terms of ecological resilience, and cities within it are highly polarized. However, the opposite is true for the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region. The rates of change in ecological resilience in BTH and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) exhibit clearly uneven spatial distributions describable as “low in the middle and high in the north and the south” and “lower on the coast than inland”, respectively. (2) The differences in ecological resilience among urban agglomerations characterize the largest portion of the total area. The values of the differences within urban agglomerations are observed, in descending order, in BTH, YRD, and PRD. (3) Regarding the structure of spatial linkages, that in BTH is more dependent on bilateral factors, whereas the importance of core cities in the PRD is clearly greater. (4) In BTH, there is an urgent need to relieve the ecological pressure on the central cities. To increase the level of ecological resilience in the YRD, controlling the landscape pattern of water systems and the ecological quality of water sources should be prioritized. The ecological linkage effect between small city circles in the PRD region should not be ignored.