Impact of urbanization on ecosystem health in Chinese urban agglomerations

With rapid economic growth, urbanization has interfered with regional ecosystems and seriously threatens ecosystem health (EH) in urban agglomerations (UAs) in China. Exploring the impact of urbanization on the EH of UAs in China can provide insights into formulating new policies regarding EH protection and high-quality development. However, investigations on this issue are primarily concentrated on single UAs, and only a few have been conducted on all UAs in China. Therefore, this study measured the urbanization and EH of 19 UAs in China in 2000, 2010, and 2020, and explored the impact of urbanization on EH using Getis-Ord Gi* and multiscale spatial regression models. The results indicated that EH presented a moderate growth trend, with mean values of EH increasing from 0.72 to 0.73 during the study period. The EH of UAs in northern China was significantly lower than that in southern China. Global Moran’s I values of EH changes between 2000 and 2010 and between 2010 and 2020 were 0.511 and 0.283, respectively; the Z-scores were 47.308 and 26.377, respectively (p = 0.001), thus indicating that EH changes in China’s UAs had strong spatial concentrations. Moreover, cold spots of EH changes primarily appeared in UAs in southeast China, whereas hot spots were mostly distributed in northwest China. Furthermore, on a global scale, the proportion of construction land and population density had a negative impact on EH, and the regression coefficients in 2020 were −0.637 and −0.276, respectively; GDP density had a positive effect, and its regression coefficient in 2020 was 0.051. However, the impact of urbanization on EH greatly varied at the local scale. These results provide a scientific reference basis to coordinate construction land expansion, economy, population, and EH, and provide support for the formulation of high-quality development policies for UAs in China.