Abstract: The Yellow River Basin serves as a vital ecological barrier and economic corridor for China. The construction of ecological security patterns (ESP) and the identification of key areas for ecological protection and restoration are of critical significance for the basin's sustainable development. In recent years, the increasing intensity of human activities has accelerated land development and utilization, leading to environmental deterioration and habitat fragmentation. Simultaneously, ecological problems such as weakened ecosystem service functions and declining biodiversity have emerged, constraining the sustainable development of the socio-economy and ecological environment.Taking the Yellow River Basin (Henan Section) as the study area, this paper establishes a spatially explicit framework comprising "sources–resistance surfaces–corridors–nodes–zones" to identify the ecological security pattern and delineate key areas for ecological protection and restoration. Based on Xie Gaodi's equivalent factor table, the ecosystem service value equivalents were modified using grain yield data to calculate ecosystem service values (ESV). Core ecological sources were screened using ESV assessment combined with hotspot analysis and landscape connectivity indices (PC/dPC). By integrating the Minimum Cumulative Resistance (MCR) model and circuit theory, a comprehensive ecological resistance surface was constructed to extract ecological corridors, ecological pinch points, and ecological barrier points. Finally, based on the watershed scale division of the Yellow River Basin (Henan Section), the K-means clustering algorithm was employed to conduct unsupervised learning classification of key ecological protection and restoration areas using the ESP construction results as an indicator system.The results indicate that: (1) A total of 30 ecological sources were identified (totaling 9, 766.19 km², accounting for 17.01% of the area), exhibiting a spatial pattern characterized as "dense in the south, sparse in the north, and clustered in the center." Sources in the southern mountainous and hilly regions form contiguous clusters, while those in the northern plains show severe fragmentation. (2) A total of 56 ecological corridors were delineated (totaling 1, 894.78 km), effectively balancing the conflict between corridor width and construction land. (3) By integrating the distribution of pinch points (47) and barrier points (81), six categories of protection and restoration priority units were classified (covering 53.33% of the total area), and differentiated management strategies were proposed. This study provides a spatial decision-making basis for the layout of ecological protection and restoration projects in the Yellow River Basin (Henan Section) and offers a replicable methodological paradigm for the construction of ecological security patterns and refined management in similar river basins.