Being closely related to ecosystem services, land use changes can affect ecosystem service functions by acting on ecosystem patterns and its processes, thus having impact on regional sustainable development. Taking the Western Sichuan Plateau as the study area based on land use data from 1990 to 2020, the CA-Markov model was employed to predict the land use pattern under natural change scenarios, and the improved InVEST model and equivalent method were used to evaluate the ecosystem services in the study area from two different perspectives, as to analyze the evolution trend. The results show that: 1) From 1990 to 2020, the carbon storage in the Western Sichuan Plateau showed a fluctuating increase, with an average annual increase of 3.17 × 10⁷ t, of which the total contribution rate of woodland and grassland to the total carbon storage exceeded 95%. In recent 30 years, the carbon storage of the Western Sichuan Plateau has little spatial variation, with the increase and decrease regions accounting for less than 5% with overall sporadically dots-like distribution. 2) Ecosystem Service Value (ESV) increased by 1.36 × 10¹⁰ yuan in the past 30 years, which was similar to carbon storage and showed a wave-like increase; the contribution rate of woodland to the total ESV of the study area was more than 68%, occupying the dominant position. ESV was generally stable in the past 30 years, and the area with significant changes accounted for less than 9%, mainly located in the northeast and southwest of the study area. 3) In the next 10 years, under the current ecological protection measures, the carbon storage and ESV of the Western Sichuan Plateau will increase by 5.3980 × 10⁷ t and 2.4087 × 10⁹ yuan compared with that of 2020, indicating a positive development of ecosystem service function. This study results provides a scientific basis for the adjustment of land use structure and the management decision of ecological environment protection in the Western Sichuan Plateau.

Objective: Studying the coupling relationship between multidimensional poverty and geological disaster risk is a beneficial exploration for the collaborative promotion of disaster and poverty reduction. Methods: Taking Sichuan province as the research area, this study adopted the multidimensional poverty index and the information content model to quantitatively evaluate the multidimensional poverty and geological disaster risk in 2019, and uses the coupling coordination degree model to explore their coupling relationship and coordinated development. Results: The development level of high-altitude areas and remote mountainous areas was lower than that of plain and hilly areas, and the spatial difference of multidimensional poverty is obvious. The risk of geological disaster is relatively high overall in the alpine valley regions of Western, Southern and Northern Sichuan. The coupling level of multidimensional poverty and geological disasters is comparatively prominent. The overall coordination degree is relatively high. There existed obvious gathering areas in places of disorder of both poverty and disaster, disaster risk lag, poverty lag and synchronous development. In contrast, the coordinated-disaster risk and the poverty lags were relatively scattered. The unbalanced development between eastern and western Sichuan is comparatively prominent. More efforts will be paid to pursue poverty and disaster reduction in a highly collaborative way. Conclusion: This study gives data support for the long-term mechanism established in Sichuan province for forestalling and defusing the risk of returning to poverty caused by disease so that the international community can learn from China’s experience through observation and collaboration in terms of poverty and disaster reduction.

Rural settlements are the spatial carriers of rural multifunctionality, and various issues related to livability are the main manifestations and causes of unbalanced and insufficient rural development. In the new era, it is imperative to promote the livability of rural settlements with the implementation of rural revitalization. However, compared with urban settlements, there are still fewer studies on the livability of rural settlements, especially those in disaster-prone areas; thus, this paper takes the upper reaches of the Minjiang River as the study area. It adopts GIS spatial analysis and the model of minimum cumulative resistance, etc., to conduct a livability evaluation and construct an optimization model by innovatively taking five aspects into account including site security and resource endowment. The results show that: (1) The overall livability of the region is relatively good, and the main factors affecting the livability are site security and economic affluence; (2) The location of rural settlements was highly livability-oriented, and the area of rural settlements in the moderate- and high-livability zones accounted for more than 90%; and (3) The key to improving the livability of rural settlements lies in the construction of development synergy, disaster management, cultural preservation and industrial upgrading, and thus, four types of settlement livability enhancement are proposed. The research results provide theoretical support for the construction of livable villages in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River and similar mountainous areas.