Quantifying the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services (ESs) and exploring their spatial scale effects are essential to guide sustainable and diversified ecosystem management. This study systematically analyzed the trade-offs and synergies between seven ESs, including water purification (WP), carbon storage (CS), habitat quality (HQ), net primary productivity (NPP), soil conservation (SC), water conservation (WC), and water yield (WY) using self-organizing feature map methods. Further, we used geographically weighted regression to quantify the effect of spatial scales (county and sub-watershed) on the trade-offs and synergies (bundles) of ESs and their spatial distribution in the Huaihe river basin from 2000 to 2020. The results indicated that (1) from 2000 to 2020, WP, NPP, and WC showed an upward trend, with the most significant increase in WC (an average increase of 15.03 mm). CS and HQ showed a downward trend. (2) The relationship between CS, HQ, NPP, SC, and WC was synergistic at both County and sub-watershed scales, and there was a substantial trade-off between WP and WY. from 2000 to 2020, the average correlation coefficients at the county scale and the sub-watershed scale were − 0.546 and − 0.434 respectively (p < 0.001). the synergy between CS, HQ, NPP, SC, and WC mainly occurred in mountainous and hilly areas, while the trade-off between WP and other ESs mainly appeared in the central plains. The relationship between WP and other ESs developed in the trade-off direction, and the other ES optimized in the collaborative direction. In terms of spatial distribution, the synergy area between most ESs is larger than the trade-off area, and the synergy area between HQ-NPP and WC-WY at the county scale is significantly larger than that at the sub-watershed scale. The average synergy area of each ES pair at the county scale is 20.48% larger than that at the sub-watershed scale. (3) Different ecosystem combinations provided six and eight ES bundles that differed in ES composition and quantity at the county and sub-watershed scales. The key synergetic bundle in the Southern Tongbai Dabie mountain is shrinking, which is more evident at the sub-watershed scale. the discovered spatial patterns, dynamics, and scale effects of ecosystem services provide helpful baseline information for exploring sustainable ecosystem management and cross-scale planning strategies in the Huaihe river basin.

In the Gulf of Mexico coastal region, prescribed fire has been increasingly used as a management tool to restore declining native ecosystems, but it also increases the threat posed by biological invasion, since the treated sites are more susceptible to invasive species such as Chinese tallow (Triadica sebifera). We chose Mississippi Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge (MSCNWR), a fire-managed landscape, to examine the potential effect of prescribed fire and landscape/community features on tallow invasion and spread. We took a complete survey of roadways and fire lines for tallow and measured a systematic sample of 144 10 × 3 m² rectangular plots along two selected roadways and a simple random sample of 56 0.04-ha circular plots across burn units. We used pair correlation function for marked point pattern data, zero-inflated negative binomial models for count data, as well as multivariate Hotelling’s T² test, to analyze the effect of prescribed fire and landscape/community characteristics on tallow invasion and spread along habitat edges and into interiors. Our results show that tallow spread along habitat edges and into interiors in a spatially clustered pattern. Tallow invasion risk decreases with the distance to seed trees and shrub coverage, and with the time since last fire if seed trees are outside the effective seed dispersal range (~300 m), but increases with the time since last fire if seed trees are within the effective seed dispersal range. Tallow seedling (≤2 years old) densities increase with the time since last fire and with increasing overstory tree basal area, but decrease with the distance to seed trees. Tallow-invaded interior plots have significantly shorter mean fire return intervals (2.7 years), lower shrub coverage (8.6%), and are closer to edges (20.3 m) than non-invaded plots (4.3 years, 18.4%, 167.6 m, respectively).

Soil moisture is an important variable affecting land surface and climate interactions. This study used cross-wavelet and wavelet coherence methods to analyze the relationship between soil moisture and climatic factors in the study area based on the soil moisture data sequence and corresponding meteorological data observed on the surface of the desert steppe in Inner Mongolia. The results showed that soil moisture had a relatively high- or low-value period for months or even years. Soil moisture was significantly different between different slope positions and soil layers. The fluctuation and mean of soil moisture decreased gradually with the deepening of soil depth. The relationship between soil moisture and meteorological factors varied with time scales. The influence of precipitation on soil moisture was significant at time scales of 1–6 months and 10–15 months, while air temperature and soil temperature showed stable and continuous periodic influence on soil moisture at the time scale of 10–15 months. Climate indexes for the Pacific region, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and North Atlantic Oscillation index (NAO) were the main climatic factors controlling soil moisture in the Inner Mongolia desert steppe and strongly correlated with soil moisture primarily on time scales of 4–7 months and 10–15 months. Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Indian Ocean basin-wide warming (IOBW) showed a strong lag effect on soil moisture.