A full-chain assessment and prediction of social-ecological system vulnerability and its driving factors in multi-ethnic regions: Evidence from southwestern Gansu, China

作者：Xiao Rong, Binqing Zhai, Rongyi Sun, Runyang Li, Jing Hao, Maurizio Meriggi, Gerardo Semprebon · 发表于：Ecological Indicators · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.ecolind.2025.114105 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Climate change impacts on agriculture、Community Health and Development、Urban Agriculture and Sustainability

Multi-ethnic regions are intricate human–environment coupled systems. Their pronounced internal heterogeneity engenders distinctive social–ecological system vulnerability (SESV) under the twin pressures of global change and regional transformation. Yet existing studies rarely deliver systematic, full-chain analyses of SESV in such settings and often overlook the decisive influence of social-cultural and demographic factors. Targeting three representative multi-ethnic areas in southwestern Gansu, China—Dingxi City, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, and Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture—this study builds on the Vulnerability Scoping Diagram (VSD) to construct an integrated full-chain SESV assessment-and-forecasting framework that incorporates natural, social, economic, demographic, and cultural dimensions. We quantify the spatiotemporal evolution of county-level SESV during 2000–2020, identify dominant drivers with an Elastic Net model (mean R 2 = 0.9981), and project SESV trajectories to 2035 using a Back-propagation (BP) neural network (mean MSE = 0.0026). The results reveal marked spatiotemporal differentiation and regional disparity: overall vulnerability declines, yet pockets of resurgence risk persist. Driver analysis shows that SESV dynamics arise from complex, spatially heterogeneous interactions among multiple factors, some of which exert counter-intuitive effects at specific development stages. Social-cultural capital and demographic structure are especially influe...