Liaoning Province, as an old industrial urban agglomeration since the founding of China, is an important link between the Bohai Economic Zone and the Northeast Economic Zone, and it has made great contributions to the economic development of China. The transformation of China’s economy and heavy industrial development have posed great challenges to the long-lasting growth of Liaoning Province. In this study, the driving force of land expansion was detected using the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model in Liaoning Province, and the land situation in 2030 was predicted under natural development, ecological protection, and economic development scenarios. We then further coupled the PLUS model with the integrated valuation of ecosystem services and trade-offs (InVEST) model to explore the spatial autocorrelation and synergistic relationship between carbon storage and habitat quality. The results indicated the following: (1) The total accuracy of the simulation in 2020 using the PLUS model reached 94.16%, and the Kappa coefficient reached 0.9089; therefore, the simulation result was highly reliable. (2) The overall spatial pattern of both carbon storage and habitat quality decreased from the northwest and southeast to the middle, and habitat quality had an impact on carbon storage to a certain extent, with a positive spatial correlation. (3) The ecological protection (EP) scenario was the only development prospect with increasing total carbon storage, which could increase carbon sequestration by approximately 7.83 × 10⁶ Mg/C, and development prospects with optimal habitat quality. (4) Weak trade-off and weak synergy dominated in the 2030 natural development (ND) scenario; most regions showed weak synergy in the ecological protection scenario, spatial heterogeneity became more pronounced in the economic development (ED) scenario, and a strong trade-off and strong synergy emerged in individual regions. The results of the study have a positive feedback effect on establishing an ecological security barrier in Liaoning Province and furthering long-lasting low-carbon urban development.

As a typical arid region in China, the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is severely constrained by the resource and environmental conditions it faces. In order to promote the balance between regional resource supply and demand and environmental sustainability, this study uses the drive-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) model to establish its water-energy-food-land (WEFL) evaluation indicator system. The coupling coordination relationship of WEFL is analyzed quantitatively using the coupling coordination degree (CCD) model. Comparative analysis is carried out on the impact of land on the coupled coordination of water-energy-food (WEF) systems from the perspective of coupled and coordinated time-series development as well as land-use changes. Finally, the future coupling coordination of the composite system is predicted using a PSO-BP (Particle Swarm Optimization–Back propagation) model. The results show the following: (1) From 2000 to 2020, the composite evaluation index (CEI) of the WEFL system has been increasing, the coupling levels are all high-quality coupling, and the coupling coordination grades goes through three stages: low coordination, moderate coordination and well coordination. (2) The inclusion of the land subsystem is good for improving the coupling coordination of the whole WEF system. (3) An increase in the areas of cropland, forest land and built-up land improves the dysfunctional decline of the WEF system. An increase in the area of grassland has a negative effect on the development of the WEF system coupling coordination. (4) Forecasts indicate that the Xinjiang WEFL system coupling coordination will maintain a well level of coordinated development in 2021–2025.