Water conservation services are key indicators of ecological services. Against the backdrop of frequent extreme weather events and water scarcity caused by global climate change and intensified human activities, assessing these services and their drivers are crucial tasks for regional ecological security and sustainable development. Jiangxi Province is one of the first national ecological civilization pilot zones in China, representing an important ecological barrier in southern China. Exploring the characteristics of spatial and temporal changes in water conservation and their driving factors can facilitate the rational development and utilization of regional water resources and the construction of ecological civilizations. Therefore, based on long time series data, the InVEST model was used to explore the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of water conservation services, and to elucidate the trend of their change through the Theil–Sen median trend analysis and the Mann–Kendall test; then, the geographic detector and geographically weighted regression model were used to further analyze the drivers of spatial variability of water conservation services. The results showed the following: (1) The average depth of water conservation was 103.18 mm, showing a spatial pattern of “low in the middle, high in the surroundings, high in the north and low in the south”. (2) Slight improvements were primarily observed (77.49%), with only 1.60% of the area showing significant improvements. (3) Land use was the main driver of the spatial differentiation, and the interaction between precipitation and forestland had a significantly greater effect on spatial heterogeneity than any single factor. (4) Obvious spatial heterogeneity occurred in the driving factor impacts, with natural factors (precipitation, evapotranspiration, forestland, and grassland) having a positive impact on water conservation services, and land-use factors (construction land and cropland) and socioeconomic factors (population density and land area) having a negative effect. This study provides a reference for water-conservation-based ecosystem construction and policy formulation in Jiangxi Province.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) poses a serious threat to urban health with the development of urbanization. There are multifaceted and comprehensive influencing factors for CVD, so clarifying the spatial distribution characteristics of CVD and multiple environmental influencing factors is conducive to improving the active health intervention of urban environment and promoting the sustainable development of cities The spatial distribution characteristics of CVD deaths in a certain district, Bengbu City, Huaihe River Basin, China, in 2019 were explored, and the correlation between multiple environmental factors and CVD mortality was investigated in this study, to reveal the action mechanism of multiple environmental factors affecting the risk of mortality. Relevant studies have shown that (1) CVD deaths are characterized as follows: male deaths are more than females; the mortality is higher in those of higher age; most of them are unemployed; cardiocerebral infarction is the main cause of death; and the deaths are mainly distributed in the central city and near the old urban area. (2) The increased CVD mortality can be attributed to the increased density of restaurants and cigarette and wine shops around the residential area, the increased traffic volume, the dense residential and spatial forms, the low green space coverage, and the distance from rivers. Therefore, appropriate urban planning and policies can improve the active health interventions in cities and reduce CVD mortality.

With increasing demand for wellness tourism, identifying the key factors influencing emotional perceptions is essential for optimizing destination planning and management. Although Anhui Province has experienced rapid growth in wellness tourism destinations in recent years, scientific understanding of tourists’ emotional perceptions and their driving mechanisms has lagged behind this rapid expansion, a gap that can be addressed by integrating big data with spatial analysis to provide a scientific perspective for optimizing destination planning and informing regional wellness tourism policy. To address this gap, this study conducts a sentiment analysis of wellness bases in Anhui Province using user-generated content (UGC) data. Sentiment scores were quantified via SnowNLP, while kernel density, time-series, and multivariate statistical analyses were applied to examine spatial distributions, temporal dynamics of sentiments and review volumes, and emotional driving factors. The results indicate a spatial pattern of higher density in the south, lower density in the north, and dual-core agglomeration, closely linked to natural resource endowments. Temporally, sentiment scores rise in spring and summer and decline in winter, while review volumes peak in spring and autumn. Overall regression analyses reveal a significant positive effect of green coverage and a negative effect of accommodation prices. In the typological analysis, sentiment scores of Forest Wellness Bases (FWBs) relate to green coverage and negative ions, while Hydrological Wellness Bases (HWBs), Traditional Chinese Medicine Wellness Bases (TCMWBs), and Wellness Towns (WTs) are driven by the combined effects of facility services, locational price, and ecological environment. These findings provide a scientific basis for the sustainable development and differentiated management of wellness tourism destinations.

Cities are of wide concern to scholars due to their major share of global carbon emissions. Energy-related carbon emissions differ significantly among cities, especially megacities, due to regional heterogeneity in socioeconomic conditions. To analyze the differences in influencing factors on carbon emissions within megacities, and further target emission reductions, measures were developed. Beijing was selected to investigate influencing factor differences in the core zones, developing zones and ecological zones using the STIRPAT model on the county level. The results show the following: (1) Regional heterogeneity existed in Beijing in carbon emissions changes from 2010 to 2022. The carbon emissions of the core zones grew steadily and were demonstrated as a major part of Beijing. (2) There were variations in the influencing factors of emissions. Population size was the major driving factor of emissions in the core zones, while emissions in the developing zones and ecological zones were driven primarily by GDP per capita. Notably, urbanization promoted the increase in carbon emissions in the developing zones, but had a negative influence on emissions in the ecological zones. The energy intensity was the primary negative force of carbon emissions in the three zones. (3) The differences in population, economic scale, industrial structure and technological level lead to the heterogeneity of carbon emissions in Beijing. The three zones should formulate targeted emission reduction measures based on the primary factors of carbon emissions and their functional positioning.

This study, taking Anhui Province as a case study, systematically evaluated the spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics of six ecosystem services (biodiversity maintenance, water yield, carbon fixation, vegetation net primary productivity (NPP), soil retention, and crop production) from 2000 to 2020 through the integration of multi-stakeholder decision-making preferences and the Marxan model. Four conservation scenarios (ecological security priority, social benefit orientation, minimum cost constraint, and balance synergy) were established to explore the spatial optimization pathways of ecological protection zones under differentiated policy objectives. The findings indicated that: (1) The ecosystem services in Anhui Province exhibited a “low north and high south” spatial gradient, with significant synergies observed in natural ecosystem services in the southern Anhui mountainous areas, while the northern Anhui agricultural areas were subjected to significant trade-offs due to intensive development. (2) High service provision in the southern Anhui mountainous areas was maintained by topographic barriers and forest protection policies (significant NPP improvement zones accounted for 50.125%), whereas soil–water services degradation in the northern Anhui plains was caused by agricultural intensification and groundwater overexploitation (slight soil retention degradation covered 24.505%, and water yield degradation areas reached 29.766%). Urbanization demonstrated a double-edged sword effect—the expansion of the Hefei metropolitan area triggered suburban biodiversity degradation (significant degradation patches occupied 0.0758%), while ecological restoration projects promoted mountain NPP growth, highlighting the necessity of synergizing natural recovery and artificial interventions. (3) Multi-scenario planning revealed that the spatial congruence between the ecological security priority scenario and traditional ecological protection redlines reached 46.57%, whereas the social benefit scenario achieved only 12.13%, exposing the inadequate responsiveness of the current conservation framework to service demands in densely populated areas. This research validated the technical superiority of multi-objective systematic planning in reconciling ecological protection and development conflicts, providing scientific support for optimizing ecological security patterns in the Yangtze River Delta region.