Spatial and temporal evolution and interaction of soil erosion intensity and influencing factors in Wenzhou City from 2000 to 2023

Soil erosion constitutes a critical global environmental issue, which is particularly pressing in rapidly urbanizing coastal hilly regions where natural and anthropogenic pressures are intensely intertwined. This study takes Wenzhou City, a typical coastal area in southeastern China, as the research object. Based on multi-source remote sensing and meteorological data from 2000 to 2023, we comprehensively applied the InVEST model to assess soil erosion intensity. This was combined with hotspot analysis, Pearson correlation, and the interpretable machine learning method (XGBoost-SHAP) to quantify its spatio-temporal evolution patterns and decipher complex factor interactions. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The erosion intensity showed phased temporal changes, transitioning from slight fluctuations before 2010 to continuous mitigation thereafter. The combined area of slight and light erosion consistently accounted for over 99% of the total, while the high-intensity erosion area drastically decreased from 27.91 km2 to 2.61 km2. (2) Spatially, a stable pattern of “slight erosion in the west, light erosion in the east” was observed, with significant clustering characteristics. Hotspots were concentrated in the hilly areas of the northeast, central, and southern parts, whereas cold spots were stably distributed in the western plains. (3) The interaction between slope gradient and precipitation was the core natural driving force, with correlation coefficients of 0.52–0.54 and 0.17–0.25, respectively. In contrast, soil moisture exhibited a significant and increasingly strong negative regulatory effect, with its importance surpassing that of land use type after 2020. The synergistic variation between evapotranspiration and temperature indirectly regulated soil erosion intensity.