## 3 Spatial Pattern of Urban Ecological Resilience in the BTHUA Region  
The urban ecological resilience in the BTHUA region ranges from \(-0.23\) to \(0.74\), with the mean value being \(0.48\), and is classified with the natural break method (Figure 2). The results show that during 2000-2020, urban ecological resilience in the BTHUA demonstrates discontinuous regional variance and a relatively small degree of dispersion, with the coefficient of variation being \(0.1036\). The overall spatial pattern is characterized by high resilience in the northwest and relatively low resilience in the southeast. Most of the regions are at middle-to-high ecological resilience levels, indicating high resilience in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region over the past twenty years, which could be attributed to the improvement of the ecological environment in this region, especially since the coordinated development from 2015 during the 13 th Five-Year-Plan period (2016-2020). High resilience areas are concentratedly distributed and account for 40% of the whole region, mainly contributed by Zhangjiakou and Chengde city, as well as areas along the Taihang mountains in Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Xingtai and Handan cities in Hebei Province. This is consistent with the function orientation of Hebei Province as the \"ecological environment support area\" in the BTHUA region. While Beijing is mainly covered by high and middle-high resilience areas, with north and southwest Beijing being more resilient than the southeast. The good resilience performance in Beijing is also consistent with Beijing's development orientation in this region to serve as the \"ecological restoration and environmental improvement demonstration area\". Along the coastal lines in Qinhuangdao, Cangzhou and Tangshan, there are also areas with high resilience. The middle-high resilient regions cover 27% of the whole region and are relatively concentrated in Beijing, Tianjin, coastal regions in Hebei Province and areas along the Taihang mountains. Areas with middle resilience account for 27% of the whole region and are relatively concentrated in south Hebei. Middle-low resilience regions account for 5% of the study area and are distributed in Tianjin and south Hebei. Low resilience areas, accounting for less than 1%, are scattered across the region, with continuous distributed  
Figure 2: Spatial pattern of urban ecological resilience in the BTHUA region. low resilience mainly in the southeast corner of Handan, northwest of Xingtai, southwest of Shijiazhuang, northeast of Cangzhou, central Baoding, north Tangshan in Hebei and middle and south Tianjin. This is attributed to the vegetation reduction along with land-use change induced by urbanization in these areas. As for land-use type, areas with high resilience are mainly forest and grassland; middle-high areas are grassland, waterbody and cultivated land; middle resilience areas are mainly grassland, cultivated and built-up land; and middle-low and low resilience areas are mainly cultivated and built-up land. The empirical results in this region show that cultivated and built-up land, disturbed by anthropogenic activities, demonstrates higher ecological risk and lower resilience. These lands with lower resilience are mainly located in the plain area of the BTHUA region between the Taihang mountains in the northwest and coastal lines in the southeast, covering southeast Beijing, central Tianjin, Shijiazhuang, central Tangshan, Qinhuangdao, Handan, Xingtai, Hengshui, Cangzhou, southeast Baoding, and Langfang cities in Hebei. These areas are also the highly urbanized areas in this region with dense populations, and they carry the burden of regional socio-economic development. However, the areas with high forest and grassland coverage are less influenced by human disturbance and exhibit high resilience levels.