Abstract Introduction Resilience is widely recognized as a critical factor in the natural regeneration of vegetation, yet spatial correlations between various resilience indicators and natural regeneration remain understudied. Objectives This research is aimed to detect spatial correlations between naturally regenerated vegetation and resilience on the Yellow River Basin (YRB) in China. Methods Google Earth Engine and the Continuous Change Detection and Classification algorithm are applied to identify two types of naturally regenerated vegetation (natural growth and natural succession) during 2000–2020. Natural growth ratio (NGR) and natural succession ratio (NSR), as well as three resilience indicators, including skewness, lag‐1 autocorrelation, and variance, are calculated as well as analyzed. Through hotspot analysis, overlay analysis, and partial correlation analysis, spatial relationships between NGR, NSR, and resilience indicators are determined. Results Our analysis reveals that 412,200 km 2 of vegetation on the YRB experienced natural growth, while 18,000 km 2 underwent natural succession. Coniferous forests exhibited the highest natural growth proportion (91.30%), whereas shrubs showed the highest succession rate (13.82%). Hotspot clustering of natural regeneration primarily occurred in upper, mid‐lower, and central basin regions, contrasting with coldspots concentrated in mid‐basin areas. All three resilience indicators demonstrated significant correlations with NGR and NSR ( p < 0.001), with skewness showing the strongest negative correlation (−0.41) with NGR. Skewness also demonstrated 60.57% spatial congruence with NGR, representing the highest level of spatial correspondence among the three resilience indicators. Conclusions This study elucidates diverse correlations between resilience indicators and naturally regenerated vegetation, providing theoretical foundations for zonal management of natural regeneration in the YRB.
Mi et al. (Sun,) studied this question.