Assessing spatio-temporal characteristics and their driving factors of ecological vulnerability in the northwestern region of Liaoning Province (China)

Evaluating the ecological vulnerability of the northwestern region of Liaoning Province, a typical ecologically vulnerable area in China, and exploring its inherent patterns help formulate effective measures for ecological protection and restoration. Existing studies in this region have focused on the county, city, or provincial level, failing to capture the overall ecological vulnerability. Based on the "sensitivity-degradation" model framework, this study employed the Analytic Hierarchy Process, Principal Component Analysis, and geographical detector methods to evaluate the ecological vulnerability in the northwestern region of Liaoning Province from 2000 to 2022 and analyzed the possible driving factors. The results showed that, from 2000 to 2022, areas with moderate or higher vulnerability accounted for an average of 64.7% of the total area, while severely and extremely vulnerable areas accounted for 32.5%. These severely and extremely vulnerable areas are mainly distributed along both banks of the Liuhe River and in the northern part of Liaoning Province, where it adjoins the Horqin Sandy Land. From 2000 to 2022, the overall ecological vulnerability in the northwestern region of Liaoning Province showed a decreasing trend, with the proportion of severe vulnerability significantly decreasing from 35.6% to 8.6%. Vegetation and land use were the primary factors leading to long-term changes in ecological vulnerability. This research can also provide an example for the similar issues in other study areas