The urban ecological functional zone in central Guizhou, positioned as the core area and growth pole for urban construction in the typical karst region of Southwest China, is the focal point of this study. Addressing the scientific challenge of comprehensively elucidating and dynamically evaluating the spatiotemporal trends in ecological environment quality, this paper, based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform, employs remote sensing ecological index and pixel dichotomous model for vegetation coverage to extract spatiotemporal information on ecological environment quality and vegetation coverage in the central Guizhou urban ecological functional zone. The study further integrates Moran's I index and Geographic Detector to quantitatively identify and analyze the key factors and driving mechanisms of ecological quality changes. Research results indicate that the ecological quality of the urban ecological functional zone in central Guizhou exhibited an overall positive trend from 2001 to 2020. The Remote Sensing Ecological Index increased from 0.742 to 0.796, and vegetation coverage rose from 0.588 to 0.758. The spatial distribution and temporal evolution trends between the two were essentially similar, with a high correlation of 0.893.Notably, regions demonstrating improved ecological quality were predominantly concentrated in areas such as Fuquan City, Wudang District, Qianxi City, and Kaiyang County, with respective average increases of 9.34%, 7.48%, 7.32%, and 6.46%. Conversely, districts including Huaxi, Guanshanhu, Baiyun, and Pingba exhibited a declining trend in ecological environment quality, with decreases of 4.62%, 2.77%, 2.54%, and 2.15%.The determination of driving factors for ecological environment quality indicates that natural factors, primarily represented by vegetation coverage, and anthropogenic factors, characterized by land use and population density, are the predominant factors influencing the ecological environment quality in the central Guizhou urban ecological functional zone. This research contributes valuable insights to assist decision-making in enhancing urban ecological civilization construction and accelerating sustainable social and economic development in Guizhou Province.