Mastering the coupling and coordination relationship and driving mechanism of urbanization and ecosystem service value (ESV) is of great significance to ecological protection and regional sustainable development. In this paper, the coupling coordination model, geographic detector and GWR model are used to analyze the spatio-temporal coupling interaction between urbanization and ESV and the spatial differentiation characteristics of influencing factors from 1995 to 2018. The results of the study are as follows: (1) During the study period, cities in the Yellow River Basin experienced accelerated urban expansion, and the ESV of forests, water and wetlands increased, which offset the reduction in ESV due to the expansion of construction land and farmland and grassland. (2) The degree of coupling and coordination between the two gradually improved, but the overall situation showed a low-level coupling and coordination process. Mild coupling coordination gradually increased, reaching an increase of 38.10%; severe imbalance types tended to disappear, decreasing by 52.38%, and coupling subtypes developed from lagging urbanization to ESV backward types. The high-value areas of the coupling coordination degree are distributed in the high-value areas of ESV in the north of the upper reaches, and the low-value areas are distributed in the cities of Henan and Shandong with high urbanization levels in the downstream and most resource-based cities in the middle reaches. (3) In addition, the spatial intensity of the effect of each dominant factor on the degree of coupling coordination is different. Economic growth, technological development, environmental regulations and the proportion of forest land have positive and belt-shaped alienation characteristics for the coupling and coordination of the two, and infrastructure and temperature show negative driving characteristics. Therefore, the coupling and coordination relationship between ESV and urbanization should be clarified to help future urban planning. On the basis of determining the regional environmental carrying capacity and the adjustment direction of the rational planning of land resources, the impact of urban barriers formed by administrative boundaries and natural geographical conditions on the development of urban agglomerations should be broken to achieve the overall high-quality and coordinated development of the basin.

Using the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, Moderate-resolution image spectroradiometer (MODIS) data of the Weihe River Basin from 2001 to 2021 were acquired, four ecological indicators, namely, greenness, wetness, heat, and dryness, were extracted, and the remote sensing ecological index (RSEI) was constructed through principal component analysis. In addition, the geographic detectors and a multi-scale geographic weighted regression model (MGWR) were used to identify the main driving factors of RSEI changes and capture the differences in spatial changes from different perspectives using multiple indicators. The results show that (1) the quality of the eco-environment in the Weihe River basin improved as a whole from 2001 to 2021, and the RSEI increased from 0.376 to 0.414. In terms of the RSEI grade, the medium RSEI and high RSEI areas increased significantly and the growth rate increased significantly, reaching 26.42% and 27.70%, respectively. (2) Spatially, the quality of the eco-environment in the Weihe River Basin exhibited a spatial distribution pattern that was high in the south and low in the north, among which the quality of the eco-environment in the Weihe River Basin in northern Shaanxi and northwestern Ningxia and Gansu was relatively low. In addition, during the study period, the RSEI of the Qinling Mountains in the southern part of the Weihe River Basin and the Jinghe River and Luohe River areas improved significantly. The urban area on the Guanzhong Plain in the Weihe River Basin experienced rapid economic growth, and urban expansion led to a significant decrease in the quality of the eco-environment. (3) The eco-environment quality in the Weihe River Basin is the result of the interaction of natural, anthropogenic, and landscape pattern factors. All of the interactions between the influencing factors had a stronger influence than those of the individual factors. There were significant differences between the individual drivers and the spatial variation in RSEI, suggesting that different factors dominate the variation in RSEI in different regions, and zonal management is crucial to achieving sustainable management of RSEI. The study shows that to improve the eco-environment quality of the Weihe River Basin, it is necessary to further strengthen ecological protection projects, reasonably allocate landscape elements, and strengthen the resistance and resilience of the ecosystem.

Urban riverfront space has diversified ecosystem services, but due to excessive changes in the geographical environment, such as drastic changes in land use, people gain social value at a great ecological cost. Obtaining benefits from the ecosystem in this way is not sustainable. Therefore, this paper uses the SolVES model to evaluate the social value of ecosystem services on the east bank of the Fenghe River, while also studying the contribution of different environmental variables to social value. The main results are as follows. (1) Environmental variables affect the spatial distribution characteristics of social value. The distance to water (DTW) means the social value was distributed in strips, and the distance to road (DTR) concentrated the social value along the road. The landscape type (LT) means the social value was concentrated in the landscape space. (2) When DTW, DTR, and LT were collectively used as environmental variables, the distribution characteristics of various social values were similar to when LT was used as the only environmental variable. (3) The results of MaxEnt show that LT made a greater contribution to the aesthetic, recreation, therapeutic, and historic values, and was the largest contribution factor to the aesthetic, therapeutic, and historic values, with contribution rates of 47.6, 50.5, and 80.0%, respectively. DTW is the factor that contributed the most to recreation, with a contribution rate of 43.1%. Improving social value based on the influence and contribution of environmental variables can reduce the damage to the ecological environment caused by changes in geographic factors. This is sustainable for both the ecosystem and the services it provides to mankind.

The supply–demand risk assessment of ecosystem services (ES) can identify the supply–demand risk level, which is very important for the sustainable management of regional ES. In this study, taking the Fenghe River watershed (FRW) as a case, based on the status and the change trend of the supply–demand ratio of ES, and the ES supply change trend, the supply–demand risk level of food provision (FP), water yield (WY), soil retention (SR), and climate regulation (CR) are evaluated, and the risk management zones of the FRW are divided using spatial superposition. The results show that: (1) The supply and demand of SR are spatially matched, while the other three ES are spatially mismatched. (2) From 2000 to 2015, the supply amount of FP, WY, and SR increases by 11.59%, 1.25% and 55%, respectively, while the supply amount of CR decreases by 5.15%. At the same time, the demand amount of FP, WY, SR and CR increases by 39.97%, 53.88%, 36.3% and 215.5%, respectively. (3) The supply–demand ratio means of four ES in the FRW are all greater than 0, but there are some areas within that are less than 0. (4) In terms of sub-watershed scale, except for SR, there are critically endangered areas for the other three ES. Moreover, the FRW is divided into 11 supply–demand risk management zones, such as FS-WY-CR critically endangered zone, WY-CR critically endangered and FS vulnerable zone. The supply–demand risk management zones based on multiple ES can identify the risk level of each ES in each zone. These results and conclusions can provide the basis for rational allocation of resources and sustainable management of ES.

The quality of human settlement environment (HSE) is related to people’s well-being. Since the implementation of the Western Development Strategy and the Grain to Green Program, the HSE in northern Shaanxi has undergone a major transformation. In order to explore the evolution pattern and seek a coordinated development strategy for all systems in the whole region, this paper, from the perspective of “production–living–ecological”, evaluates the HSE niche breadth of northern Shaanxi based on the ecological niche theory, analyzes its spatial differentiation characteristics, and identifies the development barrier factors, with the help of ArcGIS spatial analysis tools and the barrier degree model. It is found that: from 2000 to 2020, (1) the niche breadth of HSE in northern Shaanxi is high in the north and low in the south, showing obvious spatial unevenness; (2) the development of transportation promotes the improvement of HSE, but also intensifies the spatial unevenness, and the uncoordinated development rate of transportation and production and living systems has seriously restricted the further development of HSE; (3) the niche breadth of the ecosystem for each county is much lower than that of the production and living systems, and the ecological environment becomes the short board of the improvement of HSE in northern Shaanxi. Based on the patterns and problems found in the study, this paper proposes a strategy to improve the HSE of northern Shaanxi by prioritizing the balanced development of production, living systems, and transportation, strictly implementing the concept of ecological priority, dynamically adjusting the hierarchy of policies, vigorously optimizing the industrial layout, and focusing on the joint improvement of the human settlement environment in the whole region. This study expands the theories and evaluation methods of HSE to a certain extent, and the results have guiding values for promoting the sustainable development of HSE in northern Shaanxi and even the whole Loess Plateau region.

The spatial mismatch between the supply and demand of rural values is a key cause of the rural identity crisis. Promoting a shift in rural value research from a resource-oriented to a subject-perception-oriented approach is a crucial pathway to addressing this crisis. From the perspective of subjective perception, this study introduces the concept of rural social values (RSVs). Taking Yangzhong City, Jiangsu Province, as a case study, the SolVES model, comparative analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) were employed to investigate the spatial matching between RSV supply and demand. The main findings are as follows: (1) RSV supply exhibits a complex pattern characterized by “ecological baseline constraints” and “urban–rural boundary differentiation”; (2) RSV demand is shaped by both the collective expectations of subjects and the actual supply level of rural areas; (3) RSV supply–demand matching exhibits a complex situation coexisting with universal deficits, structural surpluses, and regional misalignments; (4) geographical environment and socio-economic conditions are key factors influencing the spatial matching between supply and demand at the village level, while the impact of individual characteristics is overshadowed by the overall village environment. This study not only provides a new theoretical perspective for understanding the rural value identity crisis, but also offers practical references for rural spatial governance in Yangzhong City and similar regions.