Abstract
Quantitative assessment of ecological environment quality dynamics is fundamental to evaluating large-scale ecological restoration. This study applied the Remote Sensing Ecological Index to the Three-North Shelter Forest Program’s Bayannur section using Landsat and MODIS imagery from 2002 to 2022. Theil-Sen trend analysis, Mann–Kendall testing, transition matrices, and Geodetector were used to characterize spatiotemporal changes and quantify driving factors. Key findings are as follows. The regional mean RSEI increased from 0.46 to 0.48, but the Fair grade consistently covered over 70 percent of the area, indicating limited recovery. The 2013 summer minimum of 0.36 was caused by anomalous hydrometeorological conditions, while the 2018 peak of 0.52 coincided with above-average precipitation and fell within the period of intensive TNSFP implementation, suggesting a potential synergistic effect that warrants further investigation with direct afforestation data. Over 70 percent of pixels showed no statistically significant trend (|Z|< 1.96), with significant improvements concentrated in eastern and central-southern oasis zones; however, non-significant trends should not be interpreted as ecological stability. The Fair grade had 91.90 percent self-retention, while the Moderate grade showed high mobility. During 2018 to 2022, downgrade probabilities from Good to Moderate and Moderate to Fair reached 24.47 percent and 67.57 percent, highlighting ecological fragility. Elevation showed the largest explanatory power for RSEI spatial heterogeneity (q values 0.270 to 0.494), followed by precipitation (0.227 to 0.379), while temperature influence weakened. The interaction of precipitation and elevation produced the strongest pairwise effect (q values 0.578 to 0.750), suggesting that elevational stratification of water availability is the primary spatial association pattern. These results provide robust evidence for assessing TNSFP outcomes and adaptive governance in drylands.
Funding
This research was funded by the Special Research Program on Strengthening the Construction of Important Ecological Security Barriers in Northern China, grant number STAQZX202313; the Scientific and Technological Research Project of Hetao College, grant number HYYB202612; the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 61901162; and Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Project (2024ZD18). This research was funded by the Special Research Program on Strengthening the Construction of Important Ecological Security Barriers in Northern China, grant number STAQZX202313; the Scientific and Technological Research Project of Hetao College, grant number HYZY202512; the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 61901162; and Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Project (2024ZD18).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information. (download DOCX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Suriguge, Yu, X., Ma, Z. et al. Assessing spatiotemporal dynamics and drivers of ecological environment quality using RSEI in the Bayannur region of the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, China.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67720-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67720-6
Keywords
- Remote sensing ecological index (RSEI)
- Spatiotemporal evolution
- Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP)
- Ecological environment quality
- Geodetector
- Bayannur
Source: Ecology - nature.com
