Assessment of the Impact of Climate Change on the Ecological Resilience of the Yangtze River Economic Belt

Jianglin Yao, Hongliang Wu and Feng Yan ()
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Jianglin Yao: School of Infrastructure Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
Hongliang Wu: School of Infrastructure Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
Feng Yan: School of Infrastructure Engineering, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 18, 1-26

Abstract: With climate change and frequent extreme weather events, ecological stability is facing threats. This study constructs a quantitative assessment model coupling climate change and ecological resilience (ER), explores the impact of future climate change on ER, and identifies key meteorological risks that affect ER. Taking the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) as the research area, the main research results are as follows: (1) Under the four future scenarios, the Climate Change Impact Index (CCI) values for ER are −0.8005, −0.8924, −0.9540, and −1.2298, respectively, indicating a general decline in ER across the YREB. (2) The extent of climate change impacts varies significantly among scenarios, with the ranking SSP5-8.5 > SSP4-6.0 > SSP2-4.5 > SSP1-2.6. The SSP5-8.5 scenario exhibits the most severe impacts, with CCI values of −0.7015, −1.2910, −1.3124, and −1.6144. (3) Spatially, climate change exerts the greatest impact on the upstream regions, followed by the downstream and midstream areas. Among these, very high resilience and very low resilience levels experience the most pronounced changes. (4) Temperature (Temp) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are the main meteorological risks for the deterioration of ER. In future scenarios, Temp demonstrates an increasing trend while NDVI shows a significant decline.

Keywords: climate change; ecological resilience; Yangtze River Economic Belt; quantitative impact assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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