WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
A Google Earth Engine analysis tracked a remote-sensing ecological index from 2000–2024 at 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-km grids and county scale. The regional RSEI increased by about 0.0423 overall, but the share classified as improving rose from 75.34% at 1 km to 84.25% at county scale, demonstrating how aggregation can hide opposing local trajectories. Land-use intensity was the strongest SHAP contributor in the explanatory model.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
For metropolitan ecological planning, scale is part of the result. County or city averages can be useful for screening, but site and corridor decisions need nested spatial analysis so local degradation is not erased by improvement elsewhere.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
RSEI combines greenness, wetness, dryness and surface temperature; it is not a direct biodiversity or ecosystem-integrity measure. The study is observational and cannot assign causal effects to land use or policy, and its machine-learning validation was not designed as a strict spatial or temporal holdout test.
SOURCE
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
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