Against the backdrop of accelerating globalization and the reconfiguration of ecological security patterns, border regions—serving as critical carriers of national spatial governance—exhibit pronounced spatial heterogeneity and stage-dependent characteristics in land use evolution that warrant systematic investigation. This study focuses on global border zones to reveal the trends and evolutionary pathways of land use change, thereby providing a scientific basis for border spatial governance. Using the period of 1992–2020, four phases of global land cover data from the European Space Agency (ESA) were employed. Buffer zones of 50 km, 100 km, and 150 km were established along global national boundaries, and the study period was divided into three decadal stages. Border types were classified into terrestrial borders, coastal borders, and island borders. An integrated indicator system was constructed, including the Single Land Use Dynamic Degree (SLUDD), Integrated Land Use Dynamic Degree (ILUDD), and Weighted Composite Transition Intensity. A multi-scale nested analytical framework coupled with transition matrices was applied to assess land use evolution across global, continental, and bilateral national scales. The results indicate the following: (1) Distinct evolutionary pathways exist among border types. Terrestrial borders exhibit a combination of development and ecological restoration, with staged peaks in urban expansion; coastal borders are dominated by a unidirectional conversion from cropland to built-up land; and island borders demonstrate concurrent agricultural decline, ecological recovery, and built-up expansion. (2) From 1992 to 2020, global border land use underwent a transition from high-intensity transformations to low-intensity steady adjustments. Major changes were centered on the expansion of production space, outward diffusion of built-up areas, and vegetation restructuring. High-intensity changes were concentrated near boundary zones and attenuated significantly with increasing buffer distance. (3) At the continental scale, stable hierarchical patterns emerge in terms of change intensity, spatial gradients, and transition structures. Borders in Eurasia and North America show higher activity, Africa exhibits widespread diffusion, and South America and Oceania are characterized by forest boundary reshaping and vegetation adjustments, respectively. (4) Typical border regions can be categorized into three evolutionary types: forest ecological frontiers, agricultural expansion zones, and land–sea composite corridors. Regional trajectories vary significantly, with Southeast Asia transitioning rapidly toward stabilization, West Africa retaining periodic high-intensity disturbances, and South America remaining in a low-intensity adjustment state. This study clarifies the evolutionary patterns and boundary effect ranges of global border land use, providing theoretical support and empirical references for resource allocation and ecological regulation in border regions. It also lays the groundwork for refining border typologies, quantifying driving mechanisms, and developing differentiated cross-border governance strategies.

Rural shrinkage is increasingly expressed through changing residential mobility, housing under occupancy, and intermittent dwelling use, rather than a simple linear process of permanent outmigration and abandonment. Yet empirical measurement of occupancy dynamics and the service-mediated mechanisms shaping residence stability remains limited. This study proposes an evidence-driven and explainable assessment framework that links energy-informed occupancy dynamics with settlement building area and mechanism identification, using Fuyuan City as a case study. Daily electricity consumption time series from 2021 to 2024 are used to infer occupancy dynamics and detect behavioral signatures of long term residence, seasonal residence, return visits, and vacancy. Shape-based temporal clustering identifies six occupancy trajectories, revealing pronounced heterogeneity in mobility rhythms within the rural settlement system. Settlement vacancy-related built-environment changes are characterized from 2 m remote sensing imagery, using a trained YOLO-based building detection workflow, producing settlement-level total building area as a physical indicator of the development intensity. Integrating these behavioral measures with multi-source spatial factors, the mechanism model shows that development, governance, and environmental conditions influence residence stability primarily through service provision. Among service domains, education services exhibit the strongest direct association with long-term residence stability, while transport and daily life services show modest positive effects and healthcare presents a smaller positive effect. Development conditions positively promote all service types, whereas governance and environmental context display differentiated and, in some pathways, opposing effects across services. Overall, the framework enables interpretable monitoring of rural shrinkage dynamics by jointly quantifying occupancy trajectories, settlement morphology, and service-mediated pathways shaping residential outcomes.