Spatiotemporal Dynamics, Drivers, and Landscape Ecological Risk of Coastal Wetlands in the Yellow River Delta: A Pattern–Driver–Risk Framework with GWR

Coastal wetlands, as sensitive ecological interfaces of land–sea interactions, provide regulating functions and ecosystem service values for maintaining regional ecological security. To achieve systematic restoration of ecological functions and intelligent management of resources in coastal wetlands, it is critical to deconstruct the evolution patterns of their landscape configurations across multiple spatiotemporal scales and precisely identify driving factors and ecological risk transmission mechanisms. This study constructs a trinity framework of “pattern evolution-driver analysis-risk assessment” for landscape ecological risk (LER) evaluation, integrating spatial statistical analyses (Standard Deviational Ellipse, Land Use Transition Matrix) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) models to systematically analyze the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics and multidimensional driving mechanisms of landscape patterns in the Yellow River Delta (YRD), a typical coastal wetland, from 2000 to 2023. The results are as follows: (1) total wetland area initially declines followed by partial recovery, with natural wetlands decreasing persistently and artificial wetlands expanding; (2) Gross domestic product (GDP) and temperature (TMP) are identified as the primary drivers of wetland evolution; (3) Wetland LER levels significantly increase from 2015 to 2020, with the proportion of high-risk areas rising from 10% in 2015 to 23% in 2020; (4) LER is predominantly characterized by High-High (H-H) clustering, with Moran’s I values ranging from 0.493 to 0.672 (all p < 0.001), indicating significant positive spatial autocorrelation. The wetland LER assessment framework developed in this study, grounded in a land–sea integrated perspective, provides decision-making support and theoretical foundations for formulating differentiated wetland restoration strategies and optimizing coastal ecological security patterns.