To test whether the collective construction land market and the state-owned construction land market in Nanhai District of Foshan City,the leading demonstration area of rural collective operational construction land,are integrated at different stages,this study collected a total of 3 127 urban and rural construction land transaction data samples(2010-2022)from seven townships(streets)in Nanhai District of Foshan City,and used the three-factor split-plot design to carry out statistical modeling and difference significance test to explore the impact of different land ownership,land use and spatial location on the market price of urban and rural construction land;Two-factor split-plot design is adopted simultaneously to analyze the independent effect and interactive influence of land use and location factors on the price of state-owned/collective construction land.The study found that(1)in the bottom-up local system exploration stage(2010-2015),there was no significant difference in the market price of collective and state-owned construction land(P＞0.05),indicating that,from the perspective of land price to measure the urban and rural construction land market,the urban and rural unified construction land market in Nanhai District has basically formed an integration in the bottom-up local system exploration stage.(2)Location(Township Street)factors have a significant impact on the price of collective and state-owned commercial land and collective industrial land,but have no significant impact on the price of state-owned industrial land.There is heterogeneity in how land prices across different ownership types and uses respond to location factors.(3)In the top-down central system reform stage(2016-2022),the prices of collective land for commercial use and state-owned land for commercial use converge,while the prices of collective industrial land and state-owned industrial land differ.This indicates that after the top-down central pilot reform policy allows collective construction land to enter the market,the prices of collective land for commercial use and state-owned land for commercial use tend to converge.In contrast,the prices of collective industrial land and state-owned land for industrial use differ through market mechanism adjustments,and the price formation mechanism converges.The synergistic effects of land ownership,use,and location on the prices of urban and rural construction land reflect the joint influence of property rights,use,and location on market prices.The essence of unification lies in the coordinated effects of market-oriented system reforms,land supply,and demand on the price formation mechanism.The research shows that introducing a split-plot design in the study of the land market economy,for statistical modeling and difference-significance tests,can effectively reveal the differential mechanism of urban and rural construction land price formation.This method is highly feasible and effective for deconstructing the multidimensional driving factors of land price differences and provides a new paradigm for the empirical study of land market economics.

To achieve carbon reduction goals, shifting industry toward low-carbon sectors is crucial. In China, local governments play a major role in shaping economic development through their control over land allocation. One practical way they can encourage this shift is by supplying more land to high-tech industries (HTI), which are typically low-carbon. This makes the amount of land allocation to such industries a useful and observable measure of industrial transformation. This study examines whether the carbon emissions trading system (ETS) facilitates this process by incentivizing local governments to reallocate land towards HTI. Using Chinese land transaction and urban panel data (2010-2019) and employing DID and SDID methods, this study finds that the ETS significantly encourages local governments to increase land supply for HTI. This policy impact exhibits regional heterogeneity, being stronger in eastern cities and weaker in central/western cities, and more pronounced in ordinary cities than in sub-provincial cities. Moreover, the ETS induces a significant spatial spillover effect. Further analysis reveals that the policy effect of ETS is influenced by local conditions, including industrial structure, land finance dependence, and secretary tenure. These findings highlight the ETS's role in aligning local incentives with green industrial policy. Accordingly, further nationwide expansion of the ETS is recommended, with policy design that accounts for regional heterogeneity and promotes inter-regional collaboration to maximize its overall effectiveness.

Ecological degradation in resource-depleted cities (RDCs) involves complex surface stripping and loss of soil function, yet current frameworks often lack sensitivity to mining-specific features and objectivity in spatial planning. To bridge this gap, this study proposes an integrated diagnosis-to-optimization framework, demonstrated in Huangshi, China. First, precise ecological diagnosis was achieved by developing a modified remote sensing ecological index (MRSEI) using Sentinel-2 and Landsat data. A rock index (RI) was specifically incorporated to capture mining-induced surface exposure, enabling accurate ecological environment quality (EEQ) assessment. Second, the optimal parameter-based geographical detector (OPGD) characterized key explanatory patterns. Third, biodiversity (BIO), water yield (WY), soil conservation (SC), and carbon storage (CS) were quantified using the InVEST model. And the ecological resistance surface was estimated by comparing eight machine-learning algorithms, with XGBoost incorporated into the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) framework for ecological security pattern (ESP) construction. Results indicate that EEQ followed a decline-then-recovery trajectory, exhibiting a pronounced south-high, north-low spatial gradient. Notably, the combined diagnostic and planning results suggest a restoration-illusion pattern, wherein visible greening and BIO improvement are not accompanied by a proportional recovery of SC capacity. Land use and land cover change (LUCC) was identified as the primary explanatory factor. Furthermore, the combined diagnostic and planning results suggested a divergence in ecosystem recovery, in which BIO improved while SC remained weak, indicating asymmetric recovery across ecological functions. Consequently, a planning-oriented restoration network comprising 20 primary and 24 secondary corridors was delineated. This study provides an integrated framework for ecological diagnosis and restoration prioritization in RDCs.

Industry is the core sector with the most challenging task of carbon emission reduction in China. This paper explores how industrial transformation in China’s industrial sector affects carbon emissions. We shed light on the effect of industrial sector transformation on carbon emissions, and divide industrial sector transformation into two aspects: industrial structure optimization and industrial spatial layout.We construct socioeconomic panel data for 30 cities in the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from 2000 to 2020, and explore the influence of industrial transformation on carbon emissions in 33 industrial sectors in China from three dimensions: spatial spillover effect, spatiotemporal heterogeneity, and threshold effect. The results show that: (1) In the industrial structure optimization dimension, industrial rationalization has effect on decreasing carbon emissions, while industrial upgrading increases carbon emissions. In the industrial spatial layout dimension, industrial specialization agglomeration can decline carbon emissions, while industrial diversification agglomeration does not reduce carbon emissions but instead increase carbon emissions.(2)Both industrial structure optimization and industrial spatial layout have spatiotemporal heterogeneous impacts on carbon emissions during the study period.(3) Under different levels of economic development, industrial transformation will have different impacts on carbon emissions. In the future, the Chinese government should increase efforts to promote technological progress and innovation, taking technological progress and independent innovation capabilities as the central link in promoting industrial transformation. Those findings not only provide certain environmental research reference for China’s industrial economic development and transformation, but also provide a practical reference for carbon reduction in other developing countries that are undergoing economic transformation.

During China’s period of economic transition, its policy of fiscal decentralization (FD) has vigorously promoted China’s economic development, but it has brought about a mass of carbon emissions (CE) from its urban and industrial development. To solve environmental problems, the Chinese government has promoted land marketization(LM), hoping to reduce the contradiction between economic development and environment protection. The present study aimed to investigate whether LM has helped alleviate CE in China in the context of FD. A sample data set comprising the land transactions and socioeconomic panel data of 30 provinces in China from 1997 to 2020 was constructed and analyzed to investigate how LM and FD have effects on CE during that period. The results show that (1) LM has indeed helped to reduce CE to a certain extent, whereas FD has increased CE; (2) both LM and FD have spatial spillover effects on CE, which have regional heterogeneity; (3) LM has a single threshold of carbon reduction impact on FD, and under the influence of FD, the emission reduction effect of LM presents an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship with CE. We suggest the Chinese government should keep on deepening LM reform and implementing FD reasonably to improve the assessment mechanism of local governments and to help guide socioeconomic transformation and give impetus to industrial transformation. The findings not only offer meaningful insights into China’s future environmental governance, but also give a functional guide to environmental governance for other countries in the process of economic transition.

Forest-based bioeconomy is a key pillar of Germany's bioeconomy strategies to reduce carbon emissions. Here we employ an extended spatial Durbin model and panel data (2000 to 2021) at the NUTS-3 level to examine the effect of the forest-based bioeconomy on carbon emission across Germany. Specifically, we analyze both intra-regional and spillover effects of technological innovation, bioeconomy scale, industrial upgrading, and their interactions from 2000 to 2021, covering all 401 counties and cities. The results reveal that technological innovation within the forest-based bioeconomy shows a gradual spatial diffusion, spreading from central counties or cities to surrounding areas. Locally, such innovation contributes to carbon reduction by driving industrial upgrading and generating employment opportunities in the bioeconomy. Additionally, it indirectly lowers carbon emissions in neighbouring regions through negative spillover effects associated with industrial upgrading and bioeconomy scale. These findings highlight the significant potential of the forest-based bioeconomy to enhance regional carbon performance. They underscore the importance of integrating technological innovation, labor market development, and industrial transition strategies to maximize decarbonization outcomes.

CONTEXT Resilience has become the fundamental safeguard for the sustainable development of cropland systems, given the intensifying urbanization. However, we still do not understand the dynamic evolution patterns of cropland system resilience (CSR) and its response mechanisms to the urbanization. OBJECTIVE This study aims to evaluate the spatiotemporal dynamics and distribution patterns of CSR in China's Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) at grid scale under increasing urbanization pressure. It further reveals the complex interactions between the urbanization and cropland systems. METHODS A multi-dimensional resilience framework consisting of “ecological resilience, economic resilience, and social resilience” was constructed to assess CSR dynamics in the YREB from 2000 to 2020. The K-means clustering algorithm was applied to reveal the spatial pattern of CSR. The bivariate spatial autocorrelation analysis and spatial panel fixed-effects model were adopted to detect the complex relationships between urbanization and CSR. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS The results showed that between 2000 and 2020, the level of urbanization in the YREB increased steadily, while the CSR exhibited a declining trend. Although urbanization exerted negative local effects on the CSR, it generated positive neighborhood effects. Agricultural mechanization significantly mitigated these local negative impacts and strengthened positive neighborhood effects, whereas intensive inputs of water and fertilizers exacerbated these negative effects. From a regional perspective, these findings imply that the positive neighborhood effects of urbanization, combined with a transition from input-intensive practices to modern agricultural management, can foster a mutually complementary relationship between urbanization and cropland systems. Promoting the protection and sustainable development of cropland systems requires explicit consideration of the spatial association patterns between urbanization and CSR, the farming management practices, and the spatially differentiated effects of urbanization. Such consideration can facilitate spatially coordinated and functionally complementary governance frameworks across urban-rural interfaces and regional functional zones. SIGNIFICANCES This study establishes a novel and comparable CSR assessment framework at a fine spatial scale, and examines the mechanisms through which cropland systems maintain resilient productivity under urbanization pressure. The findings not only contribute to understanding the complex relationship between cropland systems and urban systems, but also provide policy-relevant insights for cropland system protection and food security.

This research aimed to investigate whether transformation of the industrial sector in a region could improve industrial land use efficiency. Taking the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in China as the research area, we compiled socioeconomic panel data from 2000 to 2020 in order to analyze the impact of the transformation of industrial sectors in an area on industrial land use efficiency from two dimensions: industrial structural optimization and industrial spatial layout. The research results show the following: (1) The rationalization and upgrading of the industrial sector, as well as the professional agglomeration of industry and diversified industrial agglomeration, have improved the efficiency of industrial land use. (2) The impact of industrial rationalization on industrial land use efficiency presents an inverted U-shaped curve, whereby the impact of industrial upgrading on industrial land use efficiency has a relatively small spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The spatiotemporal changes in the impact of industrial specialized agglomeration on industrial land use efficiency are relatively small, while the spatiotemporal changes in the impact of industrial diversified agglomeration on industrial land use efficiency are more obvious. (3) There is obvious spatial heterogeneity in the two dimensions industrial structural optimization and industrial spatial layout in the three sub-regions when improving industrial land use efficiency.

The complex interactions of ecosystem services (ESs) are relevant to human well-being, while land-use conflicts affect the stability of these interactions. Despite their importance, current research offers limited insights into the dynamic variations of ES interactions and how they evolve in response to land-use conflicts. In this study, we constructed correlation networks to analyze the evolution of six ESs in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2000 to 2020, including habitat quality (HQ), climate regulation (CR), soil conservation (SC), carbon sequestration (CS), and food yield (FY). We also quantified the land-use conflict strength (LUCS) and applied a generalized additive model to investigate how these interactions change in response to land-use conflicts. The results showed that the network structure tended to loosen over time, with a gradual decline in interaction connectivity. FY dominated the trade-off networks, while HQ, CS, and SC were central in the synergy networks. ES interactions exhibited nonlinear effects as LUCS increased: initially, ESs experienced coupling, followed by a decoupling phase. At weak and relatively weak LUCS, ESs displayed strong positive or negative connections. However, once LUCS surpassed a certain threshold, these connections rapidly weakened, and the services formed isolated synergistic clusters. These findings enhance our understanding of land-use dynamics and provide valuable insights for promoting rational land-use planning and achieving synergistic management of ESs.

Land-use carbon emissions (LUCEs) are the second source of anthropogenic carbon emissions and need to be curbed by efficient treatment. Given the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and human activities, it is crucial to understand its effects on LUCEs. Using China as a case study, this study measures climate change by using temperature anomalies (TA) and precipitation anomalies (PA). A geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR) model is used to explore the spatiotemporal response of LUCEs to TA and PA across 30 provinces from 2000 to 2020. The results show that the impacts of both TA and PA on LUCEs shifted from negative to positive from 2000 to 2020 with the influence of TA increasing significantly since 2015. Positive effects of TA are mainly concentrated in the northern and south-central regions, and negative effects are concentrated in the south-central, eastern, and parts of the southwest regions. The negative impacts of PA on LUCEs are mostly located in the southwest and northern regions, while the positive impacts are found in the south-central and northern region. The findings suggests that climate variability can exacerbate both direct and indirect carbon emissions resulting from land use. Local governments should adopt appropriate land-use measures to cope with climate change in land-use systems.

The coordinated improvement of urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) requires an in-depth exploration of its spatial correlation network characteristics and impacts. However, the existing studies on the matter have not yet formed a unified evaluation index system, ignoring energy inputs and positive ecological outputs, and the spatial correlation analysis is limited to geographic proximity rather than revealing the characteristics of the network structure. Therefore, taking 283 Chinese cities as the research object, this investigation constructs an evaluation index system for ULGUE, based on its core attributes. It then examines the spatial correlation network structure and impact by conducting social network analysis and applying Pearson’s correlation coefficients. The results reveal the following: (1) Between 2003 and 2020, China’s overall ULGUE trended upward in stages, with reduced disparities among cities and a significant geospatial clustering phenomenon. (2) The spatial correlation network of China’s ULGUE increased gradually, transforming from a unipolar-dominant to a multi-core-led network structure centered around Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Chongqing. Moreover, the overall balanced development of ULGUE in eastern, central, and western China was strengthened. (3) The spatial equilibrium of the ULGUE was impeded by a more efficient hierarchical structure of the network, while improved degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality had significant positive impacts on the ULGUE. These findings can serve as a theoretical reference for strengthening the coordinated improvement of ULGUE in China, offering significant insights for other developing nations that are seeking to make similar improvements.

Cropland ecosystem service (CES) trade-offs are an important issue for sustainable agricultural development. Previous studies have focused on spatiotemporal variations of CES and their trade-offs. However, there have been few attempts to clarify the driving mechanism for multiple CES trade-offs. In this study, we assessed six CESs in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2000 to 2020, including food production (FP), water yield (WY), soil conservation (SC), carbon sequestration (CS), habitat quality (HQ), and landscape aesthetics (LA). Then, the hierarchical linear model (HLM) was employed to identify the multilevel determinants of FP and other CES trade-offs, considering the scale dependence of the drive factors. The results showed that compared to the baseline year, the intensities of cropland FP, WY, SC, CS, and LA increased by 31.77

In the context of climate change and sustainable development, there has been numerous researches studying the influence of land use policies on carbon sequestration. However, most of them focus on specific experimental area to explore the impact of land use policies on carbon fixation, or their impacts on a certain aspect, lacking the comprehensive explanation of both the internal influence mechanism and external effects. Therefore, this article presents a comprehensive review and the results show that scientific land use policies have the capacity of increasing net carbon sinks and soil organic carbon to realize environmental sustainability. In addition, these low-carbon land use policies can not only bring out this climate change mitigation influence, but also have external effects on cities sustainable development, food security, ecological protection, and economic disparities to promote comprehensive sustainable development. However, if these policies fail to adapt to local natural and socio-economic conditions, or overlook the potential negative impacts they could pose, these policies cannot facilitate the achievement of comprehensive sustainable development and could even impede this progress.

Reducing the conflict between economic expansion and environmental conservation requires green-based innovation policies. The synergistic impacts of these policies on promoting urban land green use efficiency (ULGUE) remain underexplored. Utilizing panel data from 285 prefecture-level cities in China (2006-2020), we apply the super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) to calculate ULGUE. Employing the staggered difference-in-difference (SDID) model and mediation model, we investigate the synergistic effects of the Carbon Emissions Trading Policy (CETP) and the Innovative City Pilot Policy (ICPP), along with their influencing mechanisms on ULGUE. The results demonstrate that the average ULGUE keeps increasing from 2006 to 2020 and the simultaneous implementation of CETP and ICPP enhances ULGUE, with a more pronounced effect when CETP precedes ICPP. The concurrent implementation of dual policies boosts ULGUE by leveraging technological innovation and industrial structure as mediators. The magnitude of the mediating effect is as follows: green innovation > general innovation > rationalization of industrial structure > advancement of industrial structure. We also observe heterogeneous synergistic impacts of CETP and ICPP on ULGUE, with greater effectiveness in non-resource-based and large-scale cities. These results offer valuable insights for crafting effective policy combinations to advance sustainable development trajectories for China and other developing countries.

Understanding the relationship between urbanization and cropland pressure is important for achieving the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The impact of urbanization on cropland pressure lacks a comprehensive analysis within a cropland supply-demand framework, particularly when considering ecological security from multiscale perspectives. In this study, we calculate cropland quantity pressure (CQP) and cropland ecological pressure (CEP) by employing a modified cropland pressure index and ecological footprint model on the basis of cropland's ecosystem service value. Then, based on the metacoupling theory, the spatial self-lagging model (SLX) is applied to test the local and remote impacts of urbanization on cropland pressure. The results show that from 2009 to 2022, China's CQP increased by 6.87 %, while CEP decreased by 7.89 %, both remaining at moderate levels. Excessive ecological pressure was observed in major grain-producing areas, with CEP 20.61 % above the national average. Urbanization exhibits trade-off effects on CQP and CEP; spatial urbanization intensifies both pressures, whereas population and social urbanization mitigate them. Remote urbanization impacts cropland pressure consistently across provincial and city scales, while local effects vary due to uneven regional urbanization development. Major grain producing areas are particularly vulnerable to urbanization's adverse effects, whether local or remote. Overall, China's cropland pressure remains severe, with a trade-off between CQP and CEP, and urbanization is not a single pressure source. This study carefully examines the relationship between urbanization and cropland pressure and provides new insights for sustainable use of cropland worldwide.

Crop specialization has become an important way to promote agricultural efficiency and increase incomes for farmers in China. Under extreme weather conditions, this is likely to increase resistance to drought risk mitigation and lead to greater drought damage. In order to make more sophisticated mitigation policy decisions, it requires efforts to assess crop drought risk variability and its risk mitigation resistance in detail. This study focuses on citrus as a cash crop, using a case of southern Jiangxi. We first constructed a drought risk assessment system for citrus, and then geographic information technology was used to characterize the risk dynamics. The factor contribution model was applied to calculate the risk mitigation resistance. And the least square error (LSE) model was finally employed to classify risk mitigation resistance types. The results showed that citrus drought risk had fluctuated moderately over macro-regions in the past 30 years, but had varied dramatically at local scales. Citrus drought risk significantly increases during the bud bust to flowering, fruit expansion, and fruit maturation stages. Exposure contributed 33.23 % to drought risk fluctuations, specifically, mainly attributed to the amplification of drought exposure in the farmer and agricultural production sectors, while 14.95 % was derived from climate change. In large-scale citrus expansion areas, the improvement in drought mitigation capacity generally lags behind the increase rate of the exposure system. The LSE model showed that risk mitigation resistance type varied across regions at system level and indicator level. In addition, water scarcity has emerged as a widespread issue that limits drought risk mitigation. Generally, this study provides new insights into the measurement of drought risk mitigation resistance and its type identification, thus contributing to the safe supply of agricultural products and human well-being.

As a major agricultural country, China is under threat from land degradation because of long-term high-carbon-emission land use patterns. Conservation tillage (CT) technologies are expected to restore soil fertility, transform agricultural production models, and improve sustainability. However, the impacts of farmers' CT adoption on achieving sustainable agricultural development remain unclear. To investigate the heterogeneous ecological effects resulting from farmers' adoption of CT technologies, this study estimates the ecological effects of CT and examines the differences in these effects across different technologies, utilizing survey data from 1,449 farmers in the rural Jianghan Plain of China. The results show that farmers' technology perceptions, previous adoption behaviour, and collective economic conditions significantly affect their CT adoption behaviour. The agricultural eco-efficiency in the Jianghan Plain is only 0.65. After removing bias from self-selection and unobservable factors, the ecological effect of CT adoption was 8.43%. The four different CT technologies evaluated in this study were found to increase agricultural eco-effects and achieve sustainable agriculture. However, the agricultural eco-effects of different CT technologies vary, indicating heterogeneity. Finally, policies that include implementing different combinations of CT models according to local conditions, technical training, and establishing subsidies for CT adoption are highly recommended.

As an important incentive and constraint system to coordinate the contradiction between ecological resource protection and regional economic development, the ecological and environmental protection effect after its implementation deserves special attention, especially for China, which involves the widest scope of payment and the largest transfer and has become the largest governmental ecological compensation program in China and even in the world. Starting from the evolution of China’s eco-financial transfer system, this study conducts an empirical investigation of the ecological and environmental protection effect of the eco-financial transfer system. Such an undertaking is based on the theoretical exploration of the impact mechanism of the eco-financial transfer system to improve the ecological environment quality and based on the panel data of 40 counties in Hubei Province from 2010 to 2020. Results of the study show that the ecological financial transfer system can promote the improvement of regional ecological environment quality, but the promotion effect is insignificant. The financial funds reflect more of a financial compensation effect than a system incentive effect. The increase in the scale of ecological transfer payments is conducive to strengthening the incentive function of the system, promoting local governments to increase environmental protection expenditures and environmental regulation efforts to improve the quality of the ecological environment. Therefore, in the process of implementing ecological financial transfers from the province to the counties, the concept of ecological value contribution should be incorporated into the fund allocation process. In addition, the current ecological transfer payment fund allocation method should be reconstructed on the basis of the ecological value contribution to enhance the guiding role of “high quality and high price, more work and more gain.” The goal is to effectively stimulate the enthusiasm of local governments for ecological environmental protection. Findings have significant guidance for developing countries that are currently seeking to formulate and implement such policies.

Rural land marketization has been an essential part of the process of deepening land system reform in China. Since 2015, 33 places in China have been chosen as pilots to build the collective-owned commercialized construction land market (CCCLM). However, little is yet known about how the market is operating and how the price of collective-owned commercialized construction land (CCCL) forms. This study analyzes the price formation mechanism of CCCL by developing a hedonic hierarchical model (HHM) with 4595 CCCL transaction cases from 2015 to 2020, basing on the establishment of a theoretical framework and exploration of the spatiotemporal differences in CCCL prices. The results suggest that the price of CCCL is shaped by the land attributes at the parcel level and the transaction environment at the county level, where transaction environment plays a stronger role in determining CCCL price. At the parcel level, the location, land use type, and land use life span contribute to the formation of the CCCL price. At the county level, the supply and demand relationship and the transaction cost determine the price. Price formation mechanisms of CCCL in western, central and eastern regions are proved to be heterogeneous and the regional differences are affected by the supply and demand relationship at county level. This study highlights the hierarchy of the determinants towards the price of CCCL and fills a gap in the understanding of the price formation mechanism of CCCL, which should help to promote the marketization of rural land and the development of an efficient land price evaluation system in China and in other transition economies worldwide.

The prolonged and rapid urbanization has intensified land use conflicts, consequently escalating ecological risks. However, the current deficiency in acknowledging the adverse ecological impacts of these conflicts hampers effective identification and governance. Taking the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) as an example, we analyzed regional land use conflicts in terms of scope, intensity, and spatial–temporal patterns based on the “risk-effect” conflict identification framework and the center of gravity-standard deviation ellipse method. Subsequently, we elucidated the dynamic response of the 12 natural-social factors to changes in conflict intensity using a random forest model. The results showed a significant 2.9 % decrease in the proportion of land use conflict areas during the latter decade (2010–2020) compared to the first decade (2000–2010), and there was a noticeable shift in the center of gravity of the conflict towards the northwest. Over the past 20 years, the predominant conflict intensity in the UAMRYR has been characterized as mild and moderate. Specifically, the proportion of mild and moderate conflict area accounted for 16.02 % and 8.51 % of the region’s total area from 2000 to 2010. This proportion decreased to 15.84 % and 7.62 % from 2010 to 2020, respectively. Variations in conflict intensity were mainly influenced by climate (annual precipitation, average annual temperature), topography (elevation), and economic development (GDP density), displaying pronounced nonlinear characteristics. Accordingly, the investigation of regional land use conflict driving mechanism and governance should fully consider the nonlinear response of the influencing factors. Additionally, this study provides methodological guidance for identifying land use conflicts in rapidly urbanizing areas, serving as a foundation for decision-making in territorial spatial governance.