The development of traffic infrastructure involves massive land use changes along the transportation routes and stimulates urban sprawl at transfer nodes, leading to a degradation in ecosystem services, including soil conservation. For developing countries, especially for China, it is very important to differentiate the influences between different standards of traffic infrastructure associated with the different administrative levels of the regions where they are constructed on soil conservation. In this study, we attempt to analyze the differences in the influence of accessibility at different levels on soil conservation, for the case study area in Hunan province in China. The results indicate that: (1) traffic conditions in Hunan province have witnessed continuous improvement, and the time taken to access mega-cities, prefecture-level cities, and county-level cities from various regions has been significantly reduced. (2) The total annual soil conservation in Hunan province is maintained at approximately 2.93 × 10⁹ t. However, the spatial heterogeneity shows severe degradation in regions with lower accessibility, and weak enhancement in regions with higher accessibility. (3) A negative spatial autocorrelationship exists between accessibility and soil conservation at all levels, with the increase of administrative rank of the destination making it more obvious and intense, along with an increased tendency for the spatial distribution to concentrate. (4) Building more railways and highways from prefecture-level cities with LH clusters nearby as transfer nodes, instead of the construction of national roads and provincial roads that diverge from these railways and highways, will help limit the massive expansion of construction land and soil erosion within prefecture-level cities, rather than spreading to towns of LH clusters. This research provides an important scientific basis for future regional planning and traffic infrastructure construction, and also a reference for traffic infrastructure development in other geographically similar regions on a synchronous development stage in the world.

Spatial mismatches between ecosystem services and human demands pose critical challenges for sustainable land use in ecologically fragile regions. Rapid urbanization intensifies land-use conflicts in ecologically fragile regions, threatening ecosystem services and habitat sustainability. This study addresses this challenge by quantifying spatial mismatches between landscape resource functions (LRFs: natural, traditional, and humanistic) and service demands (LSFs, e.g., catering and public facilities) in Xinxian County, in China’s Dabie Mountains, using multi-source data (DEM, POI big data, and remote sensing) and spatial analysis (nearest neighbor indices, kernel density, and multi-ring buffers). The results reveal that concentrated natural LRFs in high-elevation single-core clusters exhibit low dispersion, thus increasing vulnerability to land conversion, while agglomerated LSFs in urban cores exacerbate ecosystem service inequalities. Crucially, service deficits beyond 3 km buffers and the fragmentation of traditional agricultural zones indicate potential erosion of regulating services, as inferred from spatial mismatches (e.g., soil retention and water regulation), and cultural resilience. These spatial mismatches act as proxies for habitat risks, in which humanistic landscape expansion competes with ecological corridors, amplifying fragmentation. To mitigate risks, we propose (1) enhancing connectivity for natural resource corridors to stabilize regulating services, (2) reallocating LSFs to peri-urban buffers to reduce pressure on critical habitats, and (3) integrating ecosystem service trade-offs into landscape planning. This framework provides an actionable pathway for balancing development and habitat conservation in mountainous regions undergoing land-use transitions.

Farmland in aging societies increasingly serves dual roles as a productive asset and an intergenerational safety net, creating institutional path dependence that drives heterogeneous household responses to multifunctional farmland use (MFU). This study constructs Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) indices to quantify the structural balance of MFU across four functions: Economic Contribution (ECF), Food Supply (FSF), Pension Security (PSF), and Employment Security (ESF). A threshold regression model was employed to identify nonlinear effects of MFU on farmland renting-out, while mediation analysis elucidated underlying mechanisms. Key findings reveal: (1) An inverted U-shaped relationship between MFU intensity and farmland renting-out, with a tipping point at Total Functional Score (TFS) = 0.056. Higher intensity inhibits farmland renting-out for farming households (β = −0.208, p < 0.01) but promotes farmland renting-out for off-farming households (β = 9.015, p < 0.05); (2) Functional imbalances universally drive renting-out, exerting three-fold stronger effects on off-farming households (β = 0.477 vs. 0.158), where synergy between the economic contribution function (ECF) and pension security function (PSF) amplifies these imbalances while farming households resist farmland renting-out through employment security function (ESF)-PSF trade-offs. These effects are amplified by synergies between the ECF and PSF, while farming households counter farmland renting-out pressures through trade-offs between ESF and PSF. These results demonstrate how institutional-socioeconomic interactions (e.g., collective ownership and urban-rural welfare gaps) bifurcate land-use decisions. We advocate context-specific governance, such as "land- for-pension" schemes in Key Ecological Zones and ECF-optimized leasing in development zones to reconcile multifunctionality with sustainable transitions. This provides actionable pathways for agrarian economies navigating aging and urbanization globally, bridging land-use efficiency and intergenerational equity in pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals.