The Yellow River Basin of Inner Mongolia has significant ecological advantages, and it is critical to research the landscape pattern of its watershed wetland ecosystem and the changes in its service value in order to protect the environment and develop the region in a high-quality manner. In this paper, we use the landscape index method, the equivalent factor method, and a field survey to investigate changes in wetland landscape patterns and the dynamics of wetland ecosystem service values in the Yellow River Basin of Inner Mongolia from 1990 to 2020, and then examine the impact of landscape pattern evolution on wetland ecosystem service values in the region. The study’s findings indicate that rivers, lakes, and herbaceous marshes are the most common types of wetland landscapes in Inner Mongolia’s Yellow River Basin. The landscape types in the research area are diverse, and landscape fragmentation is increasing. In the Yellow River Basin of Inner Mongolia, the overall value of wetland ecosystem benefits is negatively connected with Patch Density and the Shannon Diversity Index, and positively correlated with the Contagion Index.

The spatial distribution and heterogeneity of soil and vegetation, as the root of the maintenance of ecosystem services in the riparian zone, play a decisive role in the ecological functions of the riverscape. In this study, a field survey of wetland plant communities and soil sampling were conducted in both longitudinal and lateral dimensions from the perspective of the riverscape of the Ulgai River, a typical inland river on the Mongolian Plateau. The diversity of wetland plant communities, soil physicochemical properties, and the correlations between them were systematically analyzed. The results showed that a total of 87 species belonging to 65 genera and 24 families of plants were present, with Asteraceae, Poaceae, and Cyperaceae as the main families. The plant composition and species diversity in the riparian zone at different dimensions showed obvious spatial patterns of succession. Although the correlation coefficient and significance of the physicochemical properties of river length and river width in the study area were different, most correlations remained consistent, among which soil moisture, soil pH, and total carbon were correlated with many physicochemical factors. The soil ammonium and nitrate nitrogen along the river length direction and electrical conductivity and organic carbon content along the river width direction were the main limiting factors affecting the diversity and distribution of plant species in the riparian zone based on the redundancy analysis. This study provides a theoretical basis for the continuous improvement of the current soil quality and the restoration of the degraded wetland ecosystems of inland rivers in arid and semi-arid regions, as well as a new perspective for the study of riverscape ecology.

Biodiversity promotes ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF), yet it remains unclear how wetland types mediate the biodiversity–EMF relationship. This study investigated the differences in maintaining ecosystem functionality between lacustrine (lake) and riverine (river) wetlands in a semi-arid region. We examined how multiple soil environmental variables individually influence plant communities, soil enzyme activities, and microbial community composition and diversity, and we further explored how these factors drive EMF via interactions with microbial communities. Results showed that both individual ecosystem functions and EMF were significantly lower in lacustrine wetlands compared to riverine wetlands. Plant community attributes were the primary drivers of spatial heterogeneity in bacterial, fungal, and archaeal communities; conversely, soil enzyme activities were more strongly correlated with soil structure. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed distinct regulatory mechanisms: riverine wetlands were primarily subject to direct linkage between ecosystem multifunctionality and microbial diversity, whereas lacustrine wetlands exhibited a regulatory paradigm dominated by environmental filtering, where abiotic stressors (e.g., salinity and soil moisture) indirectly drove EMF by reshaping plant communities. These findings provide critical theoretical and technical insights for the conservation and restoration of wetland ecosystems.

The Ulansuhai Basin stands as the most crucial ecological and economic zone in northern China. Resource and environmental planning serves as a core strategy, aimed at mitigating the consumption of environmental resources induced by economic expansion within the Ulansuhai Basin and facilitating the synergistic development of the economy and the environment. In this paper, by taking the data of the economy, resource and water environment of the Ulansuhai Basin during the period from 2010 to 2022 as the research basis, a fuzzy multi-objective programming model for the resource–environment and socio-economic system was constructed. The results showed that within the planting industry, giving priority to the cultivation of sunflowers and corn will enable the model results to remain in an optimal state. In the field of animal husbandry, the quantity ratio of cows to pigs should be maintained at 1.5:1, and the quantity ratio of sheep to cows should be controlled at approximately 20:1; these ratio settings were conducive to ensuring the model remains in an optimal state. When the ratio of planting industry to animal husbandry was set at 13.16:1 (with the unit of “head” for livestock quantity and “hm²” for planting area), the model arrived at the optimal solution. This study, by virtue of its analysis of the coordination mechanism of economic development with environmental protection in typical watersheds, can provide meaningful policy references for realizing the synergistic enhancement of ecological quality and economic benefits in arid and semi-arid basins, fragile ecological carrying capacity, and the balance between agricultural production expansion and environmental pollution control in these regions.