Spatiotemporal Evolution Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Urban Ecological Resilience in the Huaihe Ecological Economic Belt

Spatiotemporal differentiation and coupled driving mechanisms of urban ecological resilience in transboundary composite economic belts remain an understudied niche within human–land coupling system research. Taking 29 prefecture-level and county-level units of the Huaihe River Eco-Economic Belt from 2014 to 2023 as research samples, this study constructs an ecological resilience evaluation framework tailored to the pollution disturbance characteristics of the Huaihe River Basin under a three-dimensional theoretical framework encompassing resistance, adaptability, and recoverability. The entropy weight method is adopted to calculate comprehensive ecological resilience values, while the geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model is applied to identify spatiotemporal heterogeneous correlations among multiple influencing factors. This paper further characterizes the spatiotemporal evolutionary patterns of urban ecological resilience across the study area and unpacks the coupled associative effects of natural, economic, and social driving factors. The empirical results reveal three key findings: (1) Temporally, the overall comprehensive ecological resilience of the study region rose from 0.318 to 0.416, with a total growth rate of 30.91%. Its evolutionary trajectory follows three successive phases: rapid growth, steady improvement, and slow saturation. Adaptability, which is predominantly boosted by anthropogenic environmental governance, constitutes the primary contributor to resilience growth. The range of urban resilience values narrowed by 9.97%, indicating continuous advancement in balanced regional development. (2) Spatially, ecological resilience presents a prominent core-periphery pattern, with high-resilience zones concentrated in mountainous southwestern areas and low-resilience zones distributed across northeastern plains. All low-resilience county-level units were eliminated by 2023. (3) In terms of driving associations, topographic relief and environmental governance investment maintain persistent positive correlations with ecological resilience, while per capita GDP acts as the core economic supportive factor. The proportion of secondary industry and population density exhibit significant negative correlations with resilience. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) shifts from a negative correlation to a weak positive correlation alongside progressive ecological restoration, whereas river network variables exert negligible long-term associative impacts. Collectively, the spatiotemporally heterogeneous coupling of natural endowments, industrial-economic conditions, and social governance factors shapes the evolutionary patterns of regional ecological resilience. This study fills the research gap regarding long-timescale resilience driving mechanisms for transprovincial composite river basins covering five provinces. It identifies novel human–land coupling mechanisms, including the temporal reversal of vegetation’s ecological benefits and the dual stress imposed by industrial agglomeration and dense human settlements in plain regions. The quantitative outputs of this research can provide data-based references for differentiated coordinated ecological governance across the Huaihe Ecological Economic Belt.