With rapid industrialization and urbanization, the contradiction between the human exploitation of land production and living functions and natural ecosystem service functions has intensified. The issues of how to coordinate the exploitation and conservation functions of land and guide the rational distribution of human activities have become important for global sustainable development, especially considering the realization that multifunctional land use is an effective way to relieve land pressure and improve land use efficiency, that land multifunction has significant spatio-temporal heterogeneity, and that there is a mutual promotion and stress relationship between multifunctional land use. However, few existing studies have discussed the decoupling relationship among land use functions. In this study, a system of 10 sub-functions and 25 indicators was established based on the production function (PDF), living function (LVF), and ecological function (ELF) for 59 cities in the Yellow River Basin (YRB). There are both subjective and objective procedures employed to determine the weights, while an exploratory spatial data analysis is used to analyze the time-based and territorial changes in various functions of land use in the study area from 2000 to 2020. The decoupling relationship between the three functions is detected utilizing the theoretical foundation of the decoupling analysis. The results show that land use is multifunctional, LUFs develop unevenly, and their spatial distribution varies substantially. The results of the decoupling analysis demonstrate that the predominant types of correlations among the land use ELF and PDF and LVF over the research period are strong decoupling and strong negative decoupling correlations, with the former being a dilemma and the latter being a sustainable type of development.

Analyzing the complex dynamics of land use, accurately assessing ecosystem service values (ESVs), and predicting future trends in land use and ESVs alterations within the spatial constraints of policies are essential for policymaking and advancing sustainable development objectives. This study analyzed land use/land cover (LULC) changes in Yunnan Province from 2005 to 2020. Policy constraints were incorporated into the scenario simulations, and an improved equivalent factor method, Markov-PLUS model, global spatial autocorrelation, and the Getis-Ord Gi* method were applied to predict and analyze LULC and ESVs under different scenarios for 2030. The findings revealed the following: (1) Forests and grasslands were the dominant land use categories in YNP, with notable alterations in land use patterns recorded between 2005 and 2020. (2) The total ESVs in the study area increased by CNY 8.152 billion during this period, exhibiting an initial decline followed by gradual recovery. (3) Simulations for 2030 indicated that the natural development scenario would lead to the most extensive urbanization, while the ecological conservation scenario would yield the greatest increase in total ESVs. In contrast, only the farmland conservation scenario led to an increase in food production-related ESVs, but resulted in the lowest total ESVs among the three scenarios. These results contribute to understanding the impacts of land use changes on ESVs, and provide insights for formulating scientifically sound and effective ecological protection and development policies.