Identifying ecological functional areas by clarifying the trade-off synergies of multiple ecosystem services to meet the practical needs of coordinating different ecosystem services in a specific region is highly important. Based on InVEST, RUSLE and other models, this study analyzed the tradeoff synergies of five typical ecosystem services in the Wanjiang Urban Belt from 1990 to 2020 using Pearson correlation analysis, and self-organizing map (SOM) carried out ecological functional zoning. The PLUS model was used to simulate the evolution of ecological functional zones in 2030. The results revealed that (1) from 1990 to 2020, water yield (WY), soil reservation (SR), and food production (FP) services in Wanjiang Urban Belt increased, whereas carbon storage (CS) and habitat quality (HQ) services decreased. The value of ecosystem services showed a pattern of “high in the south and low in the north”. (2) WY–SR, WY–HQ, HQ–CS, and HQ–SR were synergistic, and the synergistic relationship showed a weakening trend. There were trade-offs in WY–CS, WY–FP, and SR–FP, and the trade-off effects increased with time. (3) The study area was divided into an ecological transition area, an ecological conservation area, an urban development area, an ecological restoration area, an agroecological area, and a water conservation area, and the functions and structures of each cluster significantly differed. (4) Under the natural development scenario, the scales of the ecological transition, ecological conservation, and agroecological areas increased. Under the cropland protection scenario, the urban development and ecological conservation areas began to transform into agroecological areas. Under the urban development scenario, the transfer of areas from ecological conservation, ecological restoration, and agroecological areas to urban development areas increased. In conclusion, the ecosystem services of the Wanjiang Urban Belt are dominated by synergistic effects, but there is a potential risk of shifting to trade-off relationships. In the future, targeted regional ecosystem optimization measures according to the evolution status of each ecological functional zone are urgently needed to provide references for territorial space management and control in this region.

Exploring the value of cultivated land resources around big cities is an important prerequisite for when realizing the “trinity” of cultivated land protection in terms of quantity, quality, and ecology. At present, the value of cultivated land resources faces the problem of having a low comparative efficiency of economic output, inadequate visualisation of asset value, and serious undervaluation. The manifestation of social, ecological, and cultural values in cultivated land plays an important role in accurately calculating the value of cultivated land. Therefore, this study attempted to clarify the composition and account for the logic of the comprehensive value of cultivated land around big cities. Taking the Hefei metropolitan area as an example, we used mathematical modeling and geostatistical analysis to measure the integrated value of cultivated land around big cities from 2010 to 2020 and analyse the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics and influencing factors. The results revealed a 2:7:1 ratio of economic, social, ecological, and cultural values for cultivated land in the metropolitan area. The comprehensive value of cultivated land was higher in 2020 than in 2010, was approximately 7.7 times the current compensation standard, and was significantly affected by the natural geography, economic development, cultivated land conditions, and protection policies. Furthermore, the comprehensive value showed spatial differentiation characteristics of ‘high in the east and south and low in the west and north’, and a spatial agglomeration effect was evident in some areas. A significant increase was observed in the social value of cultivated land, followed by an increase in the ecological and cultural values, whereas a slow downward trend was observed for the economic value. The economic value of cultivated land around big cities showed a downward trend, whereas the social, ecological, and cultural values showed upward trends. In the future, differentiated policy tools should be adopted based on the spatial heterogeneity of the comprehensive value of cultivated land in the Hefei metropolitan area to enhance their comprehensive value. In addition, scientific and reasonable compensation standards should be established, and high-quality agricultural development with the high-level protection of cultivated land should be promoted in metropolitan areas.

As China’s urbanization has shifted from high-speed to high-quality development, Urban Land Use Efficiency (ULUE) has become an important scale for evaluating urban connotative development. However, existing research has paid less attention to errors caused by different urban environmental factors and random disturbances in ULUE. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to eliminate the impact of environmental factors and random disturbances on ULUE measurement results by placing different cities under the same environmental conditions. First, a three-stage DEA envelopment analysis (T-DEA) model is introduced to calculate the ULUE of 16 prefecture-level cities in Anhui Province from 2001 to 2020. On this basis, the kernel density estimation model, gravity center model, and geographic detector models are used to study the spatial and temporal evolution and driving factors. The results show that (1) the ULUE increases nonlinearly with time, with an increase of 12.74%; (2) the overall peak of ULUE is on the rise, and changes from a single peak to a multi-peak, indicating that ULUE is constantly improving and that there is multi-level differentiation between different cities; (3) during the study period, the center of gravity of the ULUE value moved 22.66 km to the northwest; the overall moving distance was small, and the moving rate was slow; and (4) the influence of the interaction of double driving factors on ULUE is significantly greater than that of a single driving factor, and the factors of urban built-up area and degree of openness, as the key driving factors affecting ULUE, also have a degree of duality. In addition, to achieve efficient urban land use and to coordinate the environmental differences faced by different cities, the government must formulate systematic policies and development strategies considering the spatial characteristics of urban land use efficiency and the complexity of the driving factors.

The rational utilization of cultivated land resources is central to ensuring both ecological and food security in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), holding strategic significance for regional sustainable development. Using panel data from 2010 to 2023 for 130 cities in the YREB, this study examines a spatial correlation network (SCN) for non-grain land use (NGLU) and its driving forces via a modified gravity model, social network analysis (SNA), and quadratic assignment procedure regression. The results show the following: (1) The risk of NGLU continues to increase, with the spatial pattern evolving from a “single-peak right deviation” pattern to a “multi-peak coexistence” pattern featuring three-level polarization and gradient transmission, primarily driven by economic potential disparities. (2) The SCN has increased in density, but its pathways are relatively singular. Node functions exhibit significant differentiation, with high-degree nodes forming “control poles”, high-intermediate nodes dominating cross-regional risk transmission, and low-proximity nodes experiencing “protective marginalization”. Node centrality distribution is highly connected with the regional development gradient. (3) The formation of the spatial network is jointly driven by multiple factors. Geographical proximity, economic potential differences, comparative benefit differences, non-agricultural employment differences, and factor mobility all positively contribute to the spillover effect. Conversely, implementing cultivated land protection policies and the regional imbalance in local industrial development path dependence significantly inhibit the non-grain trend. This study further reveals that a synergistic governance system characterized by “axial management, node classification, and edge support” should be recommended to prevent the gradient risk transmission induced by economic disparities, providing a scientific basis for achieving sustainable use of regional cultivated land resources and coordinated governance of food security.

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of land system changes and regional sustainable development, it is crucial to explore the spatiotemporal distributions of multiple land use functions (LUFs). Therefore, herein, considering the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration (YRDUA) as the research object, we constructed an evaluation system based on the perspective of production–living–ecological (PLE) land functions. Furthermore, the coupling coordination model, kernel density curve, trend surface analysis, and spatial autocorrelation model were used to examine the spatial and temporal characteristics of LUFs and their coupling coordination and analyze the spatial clustering of the coupling coordination effect in the urban agglomeration from 2005 to 2020. The following results were obtained: The level of PLE functions and its coupling coordination degree in the YRDUA have been improved in the study period, and the distribution of high value areas of different functions is diverse. In terms of the spatial distribution of the coupling coordination degree, the high value areas of production function (PF)–living function (LF) is distributed in “clusters”, the PF–ecological function (EF) demonstrated a single-polarized development structure, and the LF-EF exhibited a multi-core structure. The coupling coordination of the LUFs demonstrated a “high in the east and low in the west” pattern in the east–west direction and an inverted “U” shape in the north–south direction. Moreover, both high-value and low-value areas exhibited a clustering phenomenon, with an evident spatial positive correlation. The results of this study can serve as a reference for the integrated socioeconomic development of the Yangtze River Delta region and the sustainable development of urban land use.