Social–ecological pathways linking urban–rural integration to rural vegetation recovery

This repository contains the datasets and analytical outputs used in the study examining how urbanization influences rural ecological change in China from 2010 to 2020 within the framework of the continuum of urbanity.

The dataset includes spatial raster layers, aggregated statistical tables, and model outputs linking urbanity, rural population dynamics, household livelihoods, land management, and vegetation change. The urbanity index was constructed at 1-km spatial resolution based on infrastructure indicators representing livelihood facilities, lifestyle services, and connectivity networks. Vegetation change is represented by the temporal trend of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and the proportion of significantly greening areas derived from Sen–slope estimation and Mann–Kendall significance tests.

All spatial datasets were extracted for rural areas defined as rural centers and villages within the urban–rural gradient framework. These areas correspond to the locations of rural households surveyed in the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), allowing the integration of household socioeconomic data with spatial environmental variables at the county level.