Resilience and dynamism: Innovative modeling of ecological group dynamics in urban landscapes

Enhancing urban ecological resilience can promote sustainable and eco-friendly urban development by reducing environmental risks and vulnerabilities. However, current studies rarely offered ecological resilience assessment method along with an understanding of the coevolution mechanisms. In this study, we selected Guangzhou as the study area to create a dynamics model to diagnose the coevolution mechanism, and quantify ecological resilience according to the depiction of the basin of attribution. The results showed that 1) there were 535 ecological patches covering an area of 121,628 ha and featuring 1229 edges and 11 ecological groups. 2)The northern and eastern regions showed relatively high closeness and betweenness centralities, however, straightness centrality was lower in these areas; the ecological edges were presented lower connectivity in the northern and southern regions. 3) By using nonlinear dynamic equation, the origin state of each group increased toward the equilibrium point E3 suggested a declining trend in ecological sustainability under current conditions. The ecological resilience was decreased from Group 8 to Group 5. This research will help to understand the coevolution mechanism of the urban system for giving practical suggestions.