The Coupling Coordination Relationship Between Urbanization and Ecosystem Health in the Yellow River Basin: A Spatial Heterogeneity Perspective

Understanding the socioecological nexus between urbanization and ecosystem health (EH) is crucial for formulating sustainable development policies. While prior research has focused on this topic, critical gaps persist in characterizing distributional polarization and decomposing inequality drivers within coupled human–environment systems—particularly in China’s Yellow River Basin (YRB), a strategic region undergoing concurrent ecological restoration and urbanization. The integration of the kernel density estimation and Theil index establishes a robust analytical framework to effectively overcome spatial heterogeneity limitations in regional disparity research. Therefore, this study combines the coupling coordination degree (CCD), nonparametric kernel density estimation, and Theil decomposition to examine the complex interactions between urbanization and the ecosystem health index (EHI) across 538 county-level units from the perspective of spatial heterogeneity. The key findings reveal the following: (1) Urbanization exhibited phased enhancement yet maintained elementary developmental stages overall, with a distinct spatial gradient descending from the eastern/central riparian counties to the western hinterlands. (2) The EHI showed a marginal upward trend, yet 80.29% of the counties persisted in the suboptimal ecological health categories (EHI-1 to EHI-3), with gains concentrated in high-vegetation mountainous areas (45.72%) versus declines in economically developed areas. (3) The CCD evolved from a mild imbalance (II-1) to low coordination (III-1) but with significant special differences—the midstream and downstream CCD improved markedly, while the upstream counties remained the weakest. (4) Intragroup disparities, particularly among the counties in the middle reaches, were the primary drivers of CCD disequilibrium across the YRB, contributing 87.9% to the overall inequality. In contrast, the downstream regions exhibited significant improvements in the coordination levels, accompanied by the emergence of distinct “multi-polarization” patterns. The findings provide refined and differentiated decision-making references for effectively narrowing the gap in coordinated development in the YRB.