Spatiotemporal pattern and influencing factors of agricultural green development in the Yellow River Basin: county evidence based on ESDA-MGWR

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) is a crucial agricultural production area in China, and promoting the Agricultural Green Development (AGD) in this region is essential for consolidating ecological barriers, and advancing high-quality development. This study takes 561 districts and counties in the YRB as the research area, the Global Entropy Method (GEM) was used to measure the AGD level of each county from 2011 to 2022, while exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) was used to examine its spatio-temporal divergence. Subsequently, the multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model was applied to analyze the scale and spatial differences of the influencing factors. The results indicate the following: (1) From 2011 to 2022, AGD in the YRB shows an upward trend, though the overall level remains low, with the middle reaches exhibiting significantly higher AGD levels than the lower reaches. (2) There is clear spatial agglomeration of AGD levels in the YRB, with a larger number of H-H and L-L agglomerations compared to H-L and L-H agglomerations. AGD is primarily dominated by clusters of similar levels. (3) The spatial heterogeneity of the influencing factors is notable, with varying levels of impact. The influence of mean annual precipitation is relatively stable with minimal spatial variation, while factors such as industrial structure, industrialization level, relative level of public finance budget expenditures, population density, and terrain ruggedness index exhibit more significant spatial differences. The intensity of influence is ranked as follows: industrialization level > terrain ruggedness index > population density > industrial structure > relative level of public finance budget expenditures > mean annual precipitation.