Simulating Ecological Network Resilience: Two Decades of Governance in the Birthplace of China’s “Two Mountains” Concept

The “Two Mountains” concept (asserting that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”) originated in Anji County, China, in 2005. Yet, whether 2 decades of governance have strengthened ecological network resilience and the connectivity that underpins it remains unclear. Using 2000–2023 data, we integrate ecosystem service assessment with circuit-theory network modeling and disturbance simulations (single- and continuous multi-node). Ecosystem services improved substantially over the study period, and the network shifted from a fragmented multi-core configuration toward a more balanced and stable topology. Resilience to single-node failure increased: The standard deviation of resilience across node-removal experiments declined from 0.020 to 0.017, indicating reduced sensitivity to individual node loss and a more evenly distributed resilience contribution across nodes. Under continuous multi-node disturbance, composite resilience rose from below 0.7 to above 0.8 in early phases and from below 0.5 to above 0.6 in mid phases. Bottleneck corridors and isolated patches remained vulnerable throughout. Scenario analyses showed that targeted restoration measures can further enhance performance: Expanding ecological sources by 15.9% raised mean resilience by 7.6% relative to the baseline under deliberate attacks, while corridor reinforcement guided by betweenness centrality increased resilience by 24.2%. These findings demonstrate that long-term ecological governance in Anji has enhanced network resilience primarily through improved connectivity and redundancy, and the framework offers transferable evidence and tools for resilience-oriented restoration and spatial planning.