Wetlands are among the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on the Earth, playing crucial roles in maintaining ecosystem services and achieving sustainable development goals. However, global wetlands have experienced dramatic declines and faced numerous ecological risks over recent decades. The Heilongjiang (Amur) River Basin (HARB) represents a critical wetland distribution area in the mid- and high-latitude zones of the Northern Hemisphere and is a globally significant transboundary river basin; however, it also faces risks of wetland degradation. In this study, we assessed the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecological vulnerability in the transboundary HARB under different wetland change modes (including expansion, stable, and degradation) during 1990–2020 using the exposure–sensitivity–adaptation framework. The Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation method and Analytic Hierarchy Process model were adopted to determine indicator weights; spatial autocorrelation analysis was used to identify spatial clustering patterns, and the GeoDetector model was employed to detect the core driving factors. The main results are as follows: (1) mean ecological vulnerability index (EVI) of the HARB increased from 30.50 in 1990 to 33.10 in 2000 and declined to 31.00 by 2020, and high EVI values were primarily located in the western and southern regions of the basin; (2) significant differences in EVI were found among China, Mongolia, and Russia, with Mongolia exhibiting the highest EVI, followed by China and then Russia; (3) soil conservation amount had the highest explanatory power, accounting for 63.18% of EVI variation, followed by net primary productivity and habitat quality index; and (4) compared with non-wetland areas, wetland areas exhibited significantly higher EVI, and wetland expansion areas also showed higher EVI than wetland stable and degradation areas. These findings provide a reference framework for evaluating wetland-related ecological vulnerability and offer valuable insights into the sustainable management of similar transboundary river basins worldwide.
Wang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.