Human activities, especially industrial production and urbanization, have significantly affected vegetation cover, water resource cycles, climate change, and biodiversity in the Qinling-Daba Mountain region and its surrounding areas. These activities contribute to complex and lasting impacts on ecological vulnerability. The Qinling Mountain region exhibits a complex interaction with human activities. The current research on the ecological vulnerability of the Qinling Mountain region primarily focuses on spatial distribution and the driving factors. This study innovatively applies the VSD assessment and Bayesian networks to systematically evaluate and simulate the ecological vulnerability of the study area over the past 20 years, which indicates that the integration of the VSD model with the Bayesian network model enables the simulation of dynamic relationships and interactions among various factors within the study areas, providing a more accurate assessment and prediction of ecosystem responses to diverse changes from a dynamic perspective. The key findings are as follows. (1) Areas of potential and slight vulnerability are concentrated in the Qinling-Daba mountainous regions. Over the past 20 years, areas of extreme and high vulnerability have significantly decreased, while areas of potential vulnerability and slight vulnerability have increased. (2) The key factors impacting ecological vulnerability during this period included industrial water use, SO2 emissions, industrial wastewater, and ecological water use. (3) Areas primarily hindering the transition to potential vulnerability are concentrated in well-developed small urban regions within basins. Furthermore, natural factors like altitude and temperature, which cannot be artificially regulated, are the major impediments to future ecological restoration. Therefore, this paper recommends natural restoration strategies based on environmental protection and governance strategies that prioritize green development as complementary measures. The discoveries of the paper provide a novel analytical method for the study of ecological vulnerability in mountainous areas, offering valuable insights for enhancing the accuracy of ecological risk prediction, fostering the integration of interdisciplinary research, and optimizing environmental governance and protection strategies.
