In the practice of watershed ecological compensation, due to the inconsistency between the interests of economic development and the objectives of ecological protection, there are typical game characteristics among the relevant stakeholders. Taking the ecological compensation between Henan and Shaanxi in the Yellow River Basin as an example, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model, obtains the external conditions for various stakeholders to achieve stable cooperation from the perspective of the government, and demonstrates the necessity of combining vertical and horizontal ecological compensation. The sensitivity of each party’s decision making to key elements is analyzed through a simulation. The results show that: (1) the optimal strategy is mainly affected by the initial willingness of the upstream government and the central government; the strong regulatory power of the central government can eliminate the influence of the initial will; (2) development opportunity costs and vertical fiscal transfer payments have the most obvious influence on upstream government decision-making; (3) the effect on optimal decision state of downstream paying upstream ecological compensation is higher than that of upstream paying downstream ecological compensation; (4) the punishment of the central government should ensure the binding force on the lower governments, and the revenue and expenditure under its supervision strategy should ensure the effectiveness of the supervision public power. The above conclusions provide support for improving the ecological compensation mechanism of transboundary basins.

Water resources provide indispensable ecosystem services, which are related to human well-being and sustainable social development. Accurately measuring the water ecosystem services value (WESV), and then grasping its changing characteristics, is particularly important for solving water problems. In this study, the typical area of the central Loess Plateau location is taken as the research area. Based on remote sensing images and statistical data, the direct market method combined with the equivalent factor method was used to calculate the WESV including groundwater and surface water, which is of greatest originality. The temporal and spatial variation characteristics in 2010, 2015 and 2020 were analyzed. Then, four WESV driving factors including per capita GDP, population density, proportion of water areas, and water consumption were selected, and the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model was used to analyze the spatial distribution pattern and temporal variation of WESV’s response to the influencing factors. The results showed that WESV experienced a process of first decreasing and then increasing, which was mainly caused by Yulin. For the composition of WESV, the proportion of provisioning services value has increased, which caused the proportion of regulating services value to decrease. The correlations between four factors and WESV were different. The distribution pattern of the influences was spatially heterogeneous, which showed regular variations over time. These results indicate the necessity of WESV’s independent research and provide a realistic basis for ecological compensation in the Yellow River Basin.

The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China experiences overexploitation of groundwater (GW), mainly through agricultural water use. Planting structure adjustment (PSA) has proved to be effective in controlling GW use, although this inevitably affects the stakeholders. An ecological protection compensation (EPC) policy has been implemented simultaneously with PSA to meet the compensation needs of those who have lost profits. However, problems in policy design and implementation resulted in insufficient sustainability of the EPC. This study aimed to resolve these problems fundamentally by improving the current policy, based on the analysis of the interactions among the central government, the local government, and the farmers. Firstly, a mechanism for implemented economic penalties for violations was introduced. Secondly, the long-term interests and respective characteristics of all parties were taken into consideration. Finally, a tripartite evolutionary game model was established. Analysis based on evolutionary game theory allowed calculation of the constraints of the parameters in the model, which can drive the model to evolve in the expected direction. Under these constraints, the numerical simulations showed that: 1) information asymmetry should be minimized as much as possible during policy implementation; 2) reducing costs can accelerate self-convergence, but will not affect other participants; 3) the implementation of economic penalties can promote the evolution of the supervised party to evolutionary stability strategy; 4) improving the level of effort by farmers in implementing the policy is key to accelerating the evolution of the entire system.

The impact of development on the ecological environment is a matter of concern, especially in the ecologically fragile agro-pastoral ecotone. The agro-pastoral ecotone of northern Shaanxi (ANS) is a representative region of the agro-pastoral ecotone in northern China. The agricultural use of sand land (AUSL) is an effective way to respond to the development needs of this region. The AUSL will certainly have an impact on water yield services in the ANS, where water resources are already scarce. In this study, the Integration Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs Tool (InVEST) model was used to simulate the water yield of the ANS under different intensity scenarios of AUSL. The results showed that AUSL reduces the regional water yield, but the impact is limited. At the maximum scale of development, the total regional water yield decreased by 1.35% compared to the base year of 2020. In terms of distribution pattern, water yield decreased the most in Yuyang District and the least in Fugu County due to the uneven distribution of sand land. At the land use and land cover (LULC) scale, the AUSL has a diminishing effect on the water yield of both cultivated land and sand land due to the more intense evapotranspiration from cropland. This study can provide data and decision support for the ANS region for building the resource-economical and environment-friendly society.

Resource-based regions (RBRs) are vital to socio-economic development, yet intensive resource exploitation strains water, energy, and food (WEF) security and causes environmental stress. Optimizing collaborative management of the WEF nexus is crucial for their sustainable development. This study developed an integrated model (WEFN) for optimizing the WEF nexus in RBRs by combining multi-objective optimization and the efficacy coefficient method. The WEFN model incorporates internal couplings and external linkages of the WEF nexus into objectives and constraints. Using Daqing, China, as a case study, six policy scenarios were designed. S1 follows the 2030 planning scheme, while S2–S5 prioritize energy-food supply, environmental protection, water conservation, and economic gains, respectively. S6, formulated via the WEFN model, integrates the objectives of S2–S5 into a collaborative management policy. A comprehensive benefit evaluation system was established, yielding an Evaluation Index (EVI) to quantify WEF system benefits and identify the optimal scenario. Results show that collaborative policy S6 best supports coordinated socio-economic and environmental development in Daqing. The findings offer a valuable reference for WEF nexus management in other RBRs.

The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus is central to regional sustainable development, particularly in resource-based regions (RBRs) facing resource depletion and ecological strain. While existing studies have examined internal WEF linkages and extended the framework to include external dimensions such as ecology and land, the stage-based succession of limiting factors across developmental stages has received limited attention, and resource-based cities in which energy and grain production functions coexist remain underexamined. Taking Daqing, a typical resource-based city in China, as a case study, this paper constructs a comprehensive evaluation index system covering water, energy, food, and regional development subsystems. The CRITIC method is adopted to calculate indicator weights, and the coupling coordination degree model is applied to analyze the evolutionary characteristics of the WEF system’s coordinated development over the period 2005–2023. The obstacle degree model is further employed to identify obstacle factors across different stages. The results indicate that the comprehensive evaluation index experienced three evolutionary stages: rapid growth, structural adjustment, and recovery and improvement. The coupling degree remained at a high level, increasing from 0.915 to 0.999, while the coupling coordination degree rose from 0.508 to 0.789, evolving from borderline coordination to moderate coordination. The dominant obstacle factors exhibit notable succession characteristics, shifting from energy and water constraints to food subsystem pressures, and finally to water supply–demand imbalances. The coordinated development of Daqing’s WEF system is driven by three core forces: the oil and gas industry cycle, water resource regulation policies, and grain planting structure adjustments. These findings provide theoretical references and practical implications for optimizing resource management and advancing sustainable development in RBRs.