Water yield as an important ecosystem service for mitigating water scarcity in drylands, is quite sensitive to land use and climate change. Evaluating the response of water yield to land use policies in drylands under climate change is conducive to sustainable water resource management. Taking the Hohhot-Baotou-Ordous-Yulin region in the northwest of China as an example, this study used the methods of the InVEST model, trend analysis, comparative experiment, PLUS model to explore the spatial-temporal trends and driving factors of water yield variation, as well as to simulate the future water yield under different land use policy scenarios. The results showed that (1) water yield in the study area fluctuated and increased from 14.14 mm to 46.59 mm during 2000 to 2020, the places with a significant increasing trend of water yield were mainly distributed in the southeast loess hilly area; (2) climate change is the major driving factor of water yield variation with a contribution rate of 85.8–99.6%, but land use change played an increasingly important role in affecting water yield; (3) the Grain-Security-Dominated (GSD) land use policy scenario would generate the highest water yield in 2030 under climate conditions of SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, SSP5-8.5, while the Regional-Greening-Dominated (RGD) land use policy scenario has the lowest water yield in the future. The results could provide reference for the decision-making process of ecological restoration and land use planning in drylands.

The study of natural resources and ecosystem service value assessments is crucial for understanding the direct economic benefits and potential ecological, environmental, and social benefits of these resources. Existing research lacks a comprehensive information management framework design and application exploration for the practice process, and a unified and standardized technical framework has not been established, which makes it difficult to expand the functions in the future. This study uses data from various aspects such as statistical yearbooks, remote sensing satellites, and field studies, and adopts the market value method and alternative cost method to construct a natural resources and ecosystem service value indicator system and a comprehensive evaluation information system, taking Shaanxi Province as an example. The total value of natural resources and ecosystem services in Shaanxi Province is CNY 107.67 trillion, of which the value of natural resources is CNY 105.11 trillion and the value of ecosystem services is CNY 2.56 trillion. This study makes up for the deficiencies in the realization path of the existing natural resources and ecosystem service value accounting studies, solves the problems of a large number of data collection sources, integration of accession criteria, integrated assessment methods, and synchronized assessment updates in natural resources management in Shaanxi Province, and realizes the visualization and information management of natural resources and ecosystem service value accounting.