What are the dominant influencing factors on the soil erosion evolution process in the Yellow River Basin?

What the dominant influencing factors are and how changes have occurred over different historical periods in Yellow River Basin are unclear. This study aims to retrieve the annual soil erosion modulus of the Yellow River Basin and utilizes the LMDI model and Geodetector model to identify the dominant driving factors of soil erosion evolution in different historical periods and regions at a pixel scale and landscape scale. Results showed that: (1) The serious (intensive, extreme intensive, and severe) erosion areas were mainly distributed in the Loess Plateau, while the slight and mild erosion areas were mainly distributed in the Hetao Plain, Ordos Plateau, and Guanzhong Plain; (2) During 1981-2019a, the gravity center of soil erosion moved from southwest to northeast, which indicated that the increment and increasing rate of soil erosion in the northeast of the Yellow River Basin were higher than that of the southwestern areas; (3) Increased soil erosion due to the R factor (ISER) was the most widely distributed, accounting for 79.21% of the area where soil erosion increased, while decreased soil erosion due to the C factor and R factor was the most widely distributed, accounting for 49.15% of the area where soil erosion decreased; (4) Before 2000a, precipitation, vegetation, and soil types were the dominant factors affecting the evolution pattern of soil erosion. Through the efforts of human intervention, such as returning farmland to forest or grassland, the explanatory power of land use change in the evolution pattern of soil erosion has increased.