Persistent differentiation in rural ecological resilience across functional village types in the Yangtze River Delta

Abstract Understanding ecological differences among functional village types can inform rural revitalization. We analysed 4,126 village units in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) at five benchmark years from 2003 to 2023, using an ecological resilience index (ERI) integrating resistance, adaptability and recovery. Five overlapping functional types were examined through city-adjusted comparisons, spatially validated extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) models and Shapley additive explanations (SHAP). In 2023, mean ERI was highest for ecological livability (EL; 0.371), followed by rural civilization (RC; 0.366), industrial prosperity (IP; 0.330), effective governance (EG; 0.312) and wealthy life (WL; 0.304). WL villages showed the largest 2003–2023 increase in mean ERI (15.360 × 10⁻³). Functional memberships explained 10.887% of variation remaining after city and year adjustment. Seven of ten city-adjusted pairwise contrasts were significant in all five years after Holm correction. Population and impervious cover were the leading predictive features for 2023 levels, while shortwave radiation, climatic water deficit and nighttime lights were prominent for trends. Spatial out-of-fold coefficients of determination (R²) ranged from 0.585 to 0.788 for levels and from 0.231 to 0.484 for trends. These findings reveal persistent functional differences alongside contrasting temporal trajectories. Integrating functional classification with assessments of resilience levels and changes provides a village-level framework for differentiated ecological assessment and long-term monitoring in rural revitalization.