Research on the impact of sand and dust weather on the social-ecological system resilience based on the DPWSIR model—taking the arid cities of Northwest China as an example

Assessment of social-ecological system resilience is a reliable means of characterizing the system’s ability to respond and recover in response to crisis events. This study takes Northwest China as the research area and aims to assess the spatiotemporal evolutionary trends of social-ecological system resilience levels. Driving force-Pressure-Meteorological constraint-State-Impact-Response(DPWSIR) model is proposed to construct the social-ecological system resilience evaluation system innovatively. The G1 entropy weight method is used to determine the index weight, and the comprehensive index method is used to calculate the social-ecological system resilience level values, evaluate the resilience of arid cities social-ecological systems in Northwest China from 2015 to 2021, and determine the resilience grades. The results demonstrate that: (1) The core status of regional central cities is highlighted, in general, the “center-periphery” spatial structure characteristics gradually stabilize. The resilience levels of regional central cities, such as Hohhot, Baotou, Xi’an, Lanzhou, Xining, Yinchuan, and Urumqi, are as high as 0.37, 0.43, 0.414, 0.41, 0.43, 0.58, and 0.39, respectively. (2) In the study area, the meteorological constraint resilience index showed a “flat-to-sudden decline” trend, with the inflection point of the sharp decline occurring in 2020. The decline in the resilience index value in arid cities is caused by the increase in precipitation and temperature, which is manifested as the result of “warming and humidification”. (3) Meteorological factors, as the direct influencing factors of sandstorms, are the most critical to the assessment of the resilience of arid cities social-ecological systems. The relative percentage difference (RPD) is used to characterize the relative difference between the traditional model (DPSIR) and the improved model (DPWSIR). In areas for example Jinchang(29%), which is close to the dust sources and greatly affected by sandstorms, the differences in the social-ecological systems resilience are large and the RPD values are significant. Therefore, the DPWSIR model is more suitable for arid cities. This study provides scientific reference for the formulation of ecological environment protection policies and resilience improvement strategies for cities affected by sandstorms.