Mineral resource extraction and urban expansion in resource-based cities have progressively degraded regional ecosystems, leading to increasingly fragmented ecological patterns. Ecological network resilience plays a critical role in maintaining regional ecological stability. In this study, we integrated landscape ecology and systems science to develop a network model and assess the resilience of ecological networks in the coal mining subsidence area with high groundwater levels. This study employed morphological spatial pattern analysis (MSPA) and circuit theory to construct the ecological network. A cascading failure model was further applied to simulate network dynamics under three attack strategies. Based on a comparative analysis of these strategies, we introduce the concept of “dangerous nodes” to identify priority conservation areas. The research results show that 101 ecological source areas and 255 ecological corridors were identified in the study area. Topologically, its ecological network is characterized by a small number of core nodes and a large number of secondary nodes. When the adjustable parameter is α1.2, attacks against nodes with a high-degree or high betweenness centrality may have significant cascading failure implications. Our results show that the network’s critical threshold Tc depends on the number of dangerous nodes in the attack set. The distribution of these nodes differs substantially between low-degree attacks and those targeting high-degree or high betweenness centrality nodes. These findings advance ecological network optimization and provide practical guidance for ecosystem conservation and restoration in resource-based cities.
Luo et al. (Sat,) studied this question.