The rapid development of industrialization and urbanization exerts a significant influence on the balance between the supply and demand of ecological products (EPs), while the enhancement of human well-being faces severe challenges. In this study, Qinghai Province, situated on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, was divided into five ecological plates: the Three-River-Source, Qaidam Basin, Qilian Mountains, Pan-Gonghe Basin, and Hehuang Valley. Based on exploratory spatial data analysis, we first assessed the supply and demand of EPs from 2000 to 2020, encompassing food production (FP), water conservation (WC), carbon sequestration (CS), soil retention (SR), and outdoor recreation (OR). Then, we constructed the ecological products supply-demand index (EPSDI) and analyzed its spatiotemporal matching and agglomeration characteristics. Finally, we revealed the spatiotemporal evolutionary differences in EPs supply and demand across different ecological plates. The results indicated that (1) Both the supply and demand of EPs showed an upward trend, with their spatial distribution exhibiting a pattern of being higher in the east and lower in the west. High-value areas of EPs were primarily distributed in the Hehuang Valley—where farmland is abundant, populations are dense, and urban development is concentrated—and in the Three-River-Source, Pan-Gonghe Basin, and Qilian Mountains—where water resources are plentiful and vegetation coverage is high. In contrast, low-value areas were mainly found in the Qaidam Basin, which features a vast area, sparse population, and predominantly arid desert landscapes. (2) The supply-demand indices for FP, WC, and OR displayed upward trends, whereas those for CS and SR showed downward trends. Areas where FP and WC supply exceeded demand tended to contract, while areas experiencing shortages of CS and OR expanded, with most of these shortage areas located in Hehuang Valley. (3) FP, WC, and SR were primarily characterized by a spatial matching pattern of “low supply and low demand”, while CS and OR were dominated by a spatial mismatch pattern of “high supply and low demand”. (4) The spatial agglomeration of EPSDI gradually intensified. With the exception of OR, whose supply-demand index was mainly characterized by low-low agglomeration, all other indices were primarily dominated by high-high agglomeration. This study offers insights for ecological protection and environmental management on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Global drylands face compounding threats from climate change and rapid human expansion, yet satellite observations paradoxically show widespread vegetation greening. This study investigates the divergent ecohydrological impacts of agricultural and urban expansions across 8,507 global dryland basins from 2000 to 2022. By integrating cloud-based, multi-source Earth observation data with a Spatial Durbin Model, we decouple the local footprints and spatial spillover effects of human land-use on surface water loss. The results unveil a pervasive Greening Illusion associated with cropland expansion, where gains in vegetation productivity are strictly sustained by the severe depletion of surface water bodies, affecting 43.33 % of the studied basins. In contrast, urban growth consistently triggers simultaneous ecological and hydrological degradation. Crucially, the spatial econometric analysis (spatial interaction coefficient ρ = 0.616) demonstrates that the indirect spatial spillover effect of agricultural expansion on water loss is significantly positive (+0.0584) and vastly overpowers its non-significant direct local footprint (‒0.0051) under the baseline k = 6 specification. This massive spatial contagion is structurally robust, exhibiting a 16.0-fold magnitude over the local footprint under physical basin contiguity, which validates a beggar-thy-neighbor dynamic, indicating that localized water withdrawals propagate severe water scarcity to hydrologically connected ecosystems. Our global functional diagnosis identifies 6,679 desiccated hotspots globally that have experienced near-complete surface water desiccation. These findings challenge the assumption that vegetation expansion universally benefits drylands and highlight the urgent need for integrated basin-scale governance, strict regulation of land conversion based on finite hydrological carrying capacities, and transboundary water-sharing frameworks to mitigate systemic ecohydrological risks.

Ecological restoration efforts on China's Loess Plateau have significantly enhanced ecosystem functions (EFs) over recent decades. Nevertheless, whether the indiscriminate pursuit of higher restoration levels necessarily enhances EFs and network complexity remains empirically unresolved. Here, we develop a restoration level-function response framework that integrates ecological network construction with threshold modeling. This study quantifies how the enhancement of EFs responds to restoration levels and identifies key nodes and optimal threshold ranges for observed variables across restoration levels. We find that EFs increased by 80.27% across restoration levels; however, the rate of enhancement diminished. Compared with natural ecosystems, farmland ecosystems exhibited relatively limited potential for functional enhancement. Network cohesion and stability exhibited nonlinear relationships with restoration levels across the region and ecosystem types, peaking at moderate restoration levels. Climate and soil factors dominated at a slight restoration level, whereas intensive land use increasingly impaired water conservation and soil retention as restoration levels increased. Critically, different restoration levels required specific threshold ranges. Exceeding optimal values for certain variables paradoxically weakened functional enhancement, highlighting the need to shift from extensive intensity control to precision threshold management for restoration strategies. These findings elucidate the nonlinear mechanisms underlying the over-restoration paradox and offer a transferable methodological framework for regions facing similar restoration challenges.

Farmland quantity continues to decline, land abandonment is a serious concern, and local quality degradation remains unresolved. This situation, in which large-scale farmland abandonment continues, is likely to induce a series of food security and ecological protection problems. However, strengthening the protection and development of abandoned farmland (AF) is very difficult. In response to this issue, this paper provides a comprehensive review and synthesis of domestic and international research on AF. The results show that the prior research has largely focused on information acquisition and the analysis of driving factors, while relatively limited attention has been given to pathways for the reuse and management of AF, with few relevant studies and practical examples available. In addition, no clear theoretical framework has been developed to evaluate and manage the multiple elements of and the overall process leading to AF. Building on an examination of the feasibility of applying resilience theory to the management of AF, this paper defines the conceptual scope and core meaning of AF resilience management and constructs a resilience management implementation path based on the steps of objective determination, problem profiling, evaluation feedback, and scheme formulation. This framework helps reveal the structure–process–function evolutionary characteristics of AF across different development stages and provides analytical support for the design of differentiated and adaptable management strategies.

Cropland quantity, quality, and ecological condition may improve in a composite assessment without becoming better aligned with zone-specific management targets. Conventional aggregation can offset deterioration in one dimension with gains in another, obscuring the resulting risk profile. We therefore propose a Target-Oriented Vector Coordination Model (TO-VCM) to evaluate whether county-level changes in cropland quantity (Q), quality (U), and ecology (E) align with policy-referenced management mandates. The model distinguishes structural alignment (Cstru) from effective advancement (Ldev) and integrates these indices with pathway classification and obstacle diagnosis. Applied to Qinghai Province, China, for 2020–2024, the framework showed that 22 of 35 counties improved in overall performance, while 9 of these counties also deviated further from zone-specific targets. Thus, higher composite scores did not necessarily indicate closer convergence with the intended management pathway. The TO-VCM provides a diagnostic basis for identifying such mismatches and informing differentiated cropland governance.

CONTEXT: Influenced by natural conditions, geographic location and socioeconomics, Qinghai Province is a typical alpine agro-pastoral ecotone; additionally, its food production system cannot cope with many risks, and exploring the suitability of resilient cropland spaces and rational utilization paths is of practical significance. OBJECTIVE: The objectives of this study are to explore the influencing factors of the resilience space of cropland in the alpine agro-pastoral ecotone and to establish a method to quantify the quantity and quality of resilience space. Finally, recommendations for the development and utilization of cropland resilience space and cropland protection in Qinghai Province are presented. METHODS: This study takes cropland system resilience as the theoretical basis and creates a conceptual model of the factors influencing cropland resilience space. The Cropland Resilience Space Index (CRSI) is constructed from the three factors of suitability, scale and aggregation and is used to quantify the spatial suitability of cropland resilience in Qinghai Province. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results revealed that there are 441,000 ha of cropland resilience space in Qinghai Province, low values of the suitability factor are distributed mainly in the edge areas of the Kunlun Mountains and the Qilian Mountains, and the scale factor and aggregation factor are generally high in the west and low in the east. The average CRSI value in Qinghai Province is 0.445, and that in Haixi Prefecture is 0.469, which is higher than the average value. Priority should be given to the development of cropland resilience space in the eastern part of Dulan County and Golmud city based on utilization sustainability and ecological stability.

Farmland abandonment is a common phenomenon that occurs at a certain stage of rural economic development and is a dynamic process driven by multiple factors. Investigating the interactions among multiple factors influencing regional farmland abandonment across spatial and temporal dimensions is crucial for formulating reclamation policies and ensuring food security Therefore, this study develops an analytical framework for factors influencing farmland abandonment based on configuration theory. Taking 13 districts (counties) in the Huangshui Basin from 2002 to 2020 as case samples, this study applies a dynamic qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to explore the configuration effects of these factors on farmland abandonment over the time series. The results indicate that no single condition constitutes a necessary condition for farmland abandonment; however, the necessity of geographical environmental conditions shows a steadily increasing trend over the study period. In the sufficiency analysis of configurations leading to a high farmland abandonment index, five configuration paths were identified, categorized into three types: environment-driven, population-resource constrained, and population-economy-policy deficient. Three additional configuration paths were found for non-high abandonment, categorized as population-oriented and economy-driven. These findings provide a new perspective for analyzing the factors influencing farmland abandonment in both temporal and spatial dimensions, and also offer a theoretical foundation and data support for the reuse of abandoned farmland.

Rural multifunctionality (RMF) is gaining attention in metropolitan suburbs for addressing the diverse needs of both urban and rural residents, yet spatial differentiation studies from a needs-based perspective remain limited. The study develops a “need-function-factors” framework to analyze RMF in China’s metropolitan suburbs, focusing on rural production, living, and ecological functions. Using the Beijing Ecological Conservation Area (BECA) as a case study, it establishes an evaluation index system with 27 indicators across eight categorized needs. By applying simple linear weighting, spatial mismatch index, and an obstacle diagnosis model, the study explores the spatial differentiation characteristics and identifies key obstacles at the township scale. The main results show that: 1) Townships in BECA are predominantly characterized by ecological functions, with plain areas excelling in production and living functions, while mountainous areas are stronger in ecological functions. The spatial patterns of rural production, living, and ecological functions are driven sequentially by specialty products need, living convenience need, and ecological conservation and regulation need respectively. 2) Main obstacles to rural production, living, and ecological functions relate to the safety and efficiency need, living convenience need, and ecological conservation and regulation need, highlighting the necessity to prioritize baseline needs. The varying impacts of obstacles across regions underscore the complexity of functional development. This study provides valuable insights for sustainable regional development, offering guidance for future land consolidation, ecological restoration, and enhancement of ecosystem services in China’s metropolitan suburbs.

The heavy metal content in soil is a key factor affecting farmland ecosystems, and high-precision aerial remote sensing is an effective tool for monitoring soil contamination. In this study, the Airborne Multimodular Imaging Spectrometer was used to collect data, which are combined with field soil samples, were analyzed to assess the spectral characteristics of Zn, Fe, and Cu. The original bands are combined into band groups, followed by band selection through the successive projections algorithm and optimum index factor. A random forest model was applied to predict metal concentrations, and model accuracy was verified. The results show that higher metal concentrations correspond to greater spectral reflectance. Spatial distribution analysis revealed that high Zn concentrations were found in the northwestern and south-central ravine areas, while low concentrations were in the southwestern and north-central regions. Fe and Cu had higher concentrations in the northwest and lower concentrations in the central and southern areas. The inversion model showed high accuracy, with R2 values of 0.918, 0.934, and 0.917 for Zn, Fe, and Cu, respectively. Overall, the contents of the three elements were low, with recommendations to supplement Fe and Cu in areas growing Scutellaria baicalensis and Rehmannia glutinosa to maintain the quality of specialty crops.

The process of mining is invariably associated with ecological and environmental challenges within the mining region, making ecological restoration efforts in these areas especially crucial. Bryophytes, acting as key pioneer species, exhibit distinctive advantages and potential for application in the ecological restoration of mining sites. This study offered a concise overview of the fundamental traits of bryophytes, as well as their classification and distribution in mining regions across China using literature synthesis and field surveys. It primarily explored the role bryophytes played in the ecological restoration of such areas, the selection of appropriate bryophyte species, and cultivation techniques through systematic analysis. Additionally, the case studies of bryophytes’ applications in ecological restoration within mining regions were analyzed. Results indicated that bryophytes in China’s mining areas were diverse and widely distributed. Notably, bryophytes contributed to soil improvement, vegetation recovery, and the monitoring and indication of heavy metal pollution, with most demonstrating a robust tolerance to these contaminants. Future research should focus on screening suitable bryophytes, refining cultivation methods, and investigating their interactions with soil microorganisms.

Implementing high-quality development strategies requires the enhancement of ecosystem functions (EFs). Despite significant progress in the ecological restoration on the Loess Plateau in China, the response of EFs to different land ecosystem restoration patterns (LERPs) during the artificial vegetation restoration remains unclear. This study introduced a social-ecological network approach that integrates LERPs analysis with spatially explicit EFs assessments to identify the patterns driving EF enhancement, reveal their underlying mechanisms, and assess responses to future climate change in representative watersheds of the Loess Plateau. The results show that the expansion of restoration areas has substantially improved EFs over the past two decades. All eight types of LERPs were significantly affected by kNDVI, with climate emerging as the key driver of network clustering and stability across multiple patterns. Moreover, LERPs that prioritize improving existing natural ecosystems were found to strengthen network structure and function more effectively than agricultural-to-natural conversion. Nevertheless, EFs were projected to decline significantly in the future if current land use patterns continue. Such declines could undermine network multifunctionality and stability by weakening node connections and reducing local connectivity. This study provides insights into the mechanisms driving EF enhancement and offers a scientific foundation for promoting ecosystem sustainability to address the challenge of ecological degradation and climate change.

Ecosystem management initiatives remain far from achieving sustainable development targets, with degraded ecosystems significantly limiting the protection efficiency. This study proposes a multi-objective framework for ecological restoration that complements existing protected areas and identifies priority areas for restoration to enhance effectiveness and sustainability within resource constraints. Focusing on a representative ecologically fragile county on the Loess Plateau, this study assessed ecosystem services (ESs) and applied the Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) model to delineate targeted protection areas. Following this, restoration objectives were established based on regional conservation requirements, accompanied by the development of a multi-objective framework and corresponding scenarios. These scenarios aimed to maximize protection efficiency, improve ecological importance and landscape connectivity, while minimizing human activities impacts. Lastly, regional ecological security patterns were constructed to identify restoration sources, corridors, and barriers, as well as prioritize restoration areas into four levels. Key findings revealed that three scenarios offered the highest trade-off and protection efficiency, respectively, selected as targeted protection areas under the hypothetical objectives. Regions characterized by higher ESs and lower human activity, encompassing one-third of the total area, exhibited lower restoration costs. Restoration priorities covered 15.25%-26.83% of the study area, with 8-19 barriers identified in agricultural and construction zones, emphasizing the imperative for land-use conversion to forests or grasslands. These findings provide actionable strategies for harmonizing ecological conservation with socio-economic imperatives, highlighting the importance of tiered protection and targeted interventions to enhance restoration effectiveness.

Vegetation greening resulting from ecological engineering efforts has statistically contributed to environmental improvement, through enhancing ecosystem effectiveness remains a challenge. Nevertheless, there has been a notable lack of research dedicated to enhancing vegetation resilience and restoration potential by mitigating vegetation browning in watersheds within arid and semi-arid regions. This study fills that gap by identifying the spatial heterogeneity in ecological resilience using statistical analyses and an exponential decay approach. It then evaluates the potential for ecological restoration by optimizing ecosystem structures in browning areas based on resilience and reference state. The key findings included the following: (1) With a narrower interquartile range, kNDVI values from 2015 to 2023 demonstrated notable increases as compared to 2000–2014. The northern and eastern sub-watersheds showed greater vegetation restoration, but the southern regions showed less resilience. (2) Vegetation resilience in the majority of sub-watersheds was concentrated at moderate levels, and the number of grids with strong positive tendencies decreased, according to the analysis of grid trends. (3) Fifteen reference states were established for browning areas based on the current natural conditions. The larger restoration potential ratio showed notable differences in sub-watershed restoration, indicating opportunities for improvement. Extreme vegetation degradation demonstrated little potential for restoration in resource-poor areas. This study provides valuable insights into integrating resilience and restoration potential into ecological restoration practices, advancing the application of ecological engineering strategies.

The coordinated development of ecological services, food production, and human survival presents new challenges for protecting cultivated land (CL) in the ecologically fragile region of the Tibetan Plateau (TPEFR). There is an urgent need to explore transformative pathways for conserving CL in the region. In this study, a multifunctional supply and demand perspective is taken to explore such pathways. Correlation analysis and a coupled coordination degree model are used to understand the intrinsic structural characteristics that impact the multifunctionality of CLs. The K-means clustering algorithm is utilized to identify the alignment between the supply and demand of multiple CL functions and determine dominant and deficient CL functions. Finally, a comprehensive zoning approach is employed to enhance the dominant functions of CL, and transformation zones and the corresponding directions of these functions are identified, along with proposed countermeasures. The findings indicate the following: (1) There were disparities between the supply and demand of production, life, and ecological functions in Qinghai Province from 2000 to 2020. (2) A trade-off relationship exists between the supply and demand of CL production and ecological functions. (3) The degree of coordination between CL functions decreases from east to west in Qinghai Province. (4) CL resources in Qinghai Province can be categorized into eight zones. Among these, four zones undergo function-enhancing transformation to enhance production function, life function, ecological function, and multifunctional synergistic enhancement and protection. The remaining four zones prioritize the protection of ecological functions. In this study, a new paradigm is provided for the protection of CL in the TPEFR. The intrinsic mechanism and extrinsic aggregation of multifunctional supply–demand relationships are considered for comprehensive multifunctional zoning of CL, and the different transformation areas and their transformation directions are clarified.

Healthy watershed environments are essential for socioeconomic sustainability. The long-term monitoring and assessment of watershed ecological environments provide a timely and accurate understanding of ecosystem dynamics, informing industry and policy adjustments. This study focused on the upper-middle Fen River Basin (UMFRB) in eastern China’s Loess Plateau and analyzed the long-term spatial and temporal characteristics of eco-quality from 2000 to 2023 by calculating a remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) via the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. In addition, this study also explored the trends and future consistency of the RSEI, as well as the impacts of natural and anthropogenic factors on RSEI spatial variations. The findings revealed that (1) the average RSEI value increased from 0.51 to 0.57 over the past 24 years, reflecting an overall improvement in eco-quality, although urban centers in the Taiyuan Basin exhibited localized degradation. (2) The Hurst index value was 0.468, indicating anti-consistency, with most regions showing trends of future decline or exhibiting stochastic fluctuations. (3) Elevation, temperature, precipitation, slope, and land use intensity are significantly correlated with ecological quality. Natural factors dominate in densely vegetated regions, whereas socioeconomic factors dominate in populated plains. These results provide valuable guidance for formulating targeted ecological restoration measures, protection policies, and engineering solutions.

Curbing the continuous abandonment of large areas of farmland is important for meeting the global food demand and promoting agricultural and rural development. Accurate identification is the key to the effective management and utilization of abandoned farmland. The identification of abandoned land based on a long time series of remote sensing data has become rapid and effective. Therefore, a set of training and test datasets generated from invariant samples and reference sample sets is established in this paper. On this basis, the Google Earth Engine (GEE) is used to classify Landsat and Sentinel high-precision long-term remote sensing images from 2000 to 2022. In addition, a change detector based on the sliding window algorithm is proposed to extract abandoned farmland in the Huangshui Basin from 2002 to 2020, and the intensity, trend, frequency, reclamation rate and utilization efficiency are analyzed. The results revealed that the OA of land use classification in the Huangshui Basin from 2000 to 2022 was between 0.852 and 0.91, and the kappa coefficient was between 0.822 and 0.89, indicating a good classification effect. From 2002 to 2020, the accumulated abandoned farmland area in the Huangshui Basin continued to increase, showing a fluctuating upward trend, and the phenomenon of farmland abandonment and reclamation occurs repeatedly in some areas. From the overall distribution, the abandoned area gradually increased from the central region to the southeast. With the passage of time, the amount of abandoned farmland in the valley increased gradually, and the abandoned area was transferred from the high mountains to the valley area. The average annual abandonment rate of supplementary farmland was 50.45%, which was much greater than that of basic farmland. Most of the supplementary farmland could not be effectively and judiciously used, and the utilization efficiency was low. The research results provide data support for the reuse of abandoned farmland in ecologically fragile plateau areas, the formulation of targeted strategies, the implementation of timely adjustments, and the establishment of new ideas and methods for the accurate identification of abandoned farmland.

Identifying the interactions of land use functions (LUFs) is of great significance for alleviating the contradiction between human and land, and promoting sustainable use of land resources. However, few studies concerned the interactions of LUFs in urban agglomerations of ecologically fragile areas in China at a fine scale. In this study, we constructed a quantitative and visualized evaluation system of LUFs that conforms to three primary functions, ten sub-functions, and nineteen indicators of Lanzhou-Xining urban agglomeration (LXUA) in the upper reaches of the Yellow River basin based on the production-living- ecological functions. Then, the comprehensive evaluation method, hot spot analysis, and geographic weighted regression (GWR) model were used to identify the interactions among LUFs and influencing factors of LXUA from 2000 to 2020 at the county and grid scales. The results show that the LXUA is dominated by ecological function (EF), and EF and living function (LF) showing a “U” shaped change feature, while production function (PF) show an inverted “U” shaped change feature. Meanwhile, the cold spots and hot spots of PF and EF present the spatial characteristic of “overall dispersion and local aggregation”, while the LF has no cold spots, and the hot spots present the spatial characteristic of “point-axis”. Moreover, the PF and LF are in a synergistic relationship at two scales, with complementarity in space, while the EF and PF and the PF and LF are both in a trade-offs relationship, with overlap in space. Finally, socioeconomic development factors have remarkable impact on LUFs at the county scale, while LUFs at the grid scale is the comprehensive result of natural conditions, socioeconomic factors, accessibility and political factors. The results can provide references for the LXUA to differentiated design the land use policy, and provide empirical case for other ecologically fragile areas to alleviate the trade-offs of LUFs.

Soil nutrients are crucial to assess land reclamation quality, and the use of various types of remote sensing data for soil nutrient inversion has been a key focus for soil monitoring. However, fewer studies have been conducted using satellite-based hyperspectral remote sensing. To explore the potential of satellite-based hyperspectral remote sensing in soil nutrient monitoring, this study selected soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium content data from 83 sample sites using ZhuHai-1 hyperspectral data. After spectral transformation and feature extraction, various inversion models were constructed, including partial least squares regression, support vector machine, recurrent neural network, and random forest. After verification by accuracy, the best spectral-model combination was used for inversion. The results showed that the R-squared range of the inversion models was 0.67748-0.78115. High content areas of soil organic matter and available potassium exhibited concentrated and contiguous features, while high content areas of total nitrogen and available phosphorus were more fragmented and fine-grained. Alfalfa grassland plays a vital role in improving reconstructed soil in the early reclamation stage, and agricultural activities have differential impacts on soil nutrient accumulation. This study provides a theoretical basis for verifying the application capability of ZhuHai-1 hyperspectral satellite data in soil monitoring.