The coordination relationship between land urbanization and population urbanization is crucial for achieving sustainable development under economic transition. Moreover, the balance between land urbanization and population urbanization is essential to guarantee the urbanization process of an entire city. This paper empirically analyzes the interaction between land urbanization and population urbanization in Nanchang from 2002 to 2017 based on the coupling coordination model (CCM). The impacts of the coordination degree on coordinated development are quantified by multivariate linear regression (MLR). The results show the following: (1) The indices of land urbanization and population urbanization in Nanchang showed an upward trend, and therefore the coordination degree in Nanchang increased significantly from 2002 to 2017. (2) The coordinated development of urbanization underwent two stages: disordered and moderately disordered. (3) The urban population proportion and the supporting capability of agricultural production had a positive impact on coordinated development. Meanwhile, the results also show that per capita education expenditures and the per capita public green area had negative impacts on the coordination degree, while economic development and the urban industrial structure were positive contributors to the coordination degree. Finally, this paper proposes that policies should be formulated to achieve coordinated development of urbanization. It can be concluded that the results regarding coordinated development of urbanization can help decision makers formulate effective measures to achieve coordinated development in the future.

The land topic has generally become a major socioeconomic issue that currently attracts attention globally. To explore the issue, various countries devote much attention to land use planning. This paper searches the Core Collection of the Web of Science and collects 1771 land use planning articles published between 1990 and 2019. The R software, biblioshiny package, and CiteSpace are applied in this paper. The results show the following: (1) the number of papers related to land use planning has shown an overall growth trend, which can be divided into the following four stages: initial exploration, preliminary growth, stable development, and rapid development; (2) the United States is in an absolute leading position as the primary research force among developed countries. The top 3 countries related to international cooperation are the United States, China, and Italy; (3) land use planning, land use, GIS, urban planning, China, spatial planning and climate change are some high-frequency keywords used in land use planning; (4) the current research hot spots mainly focus on the relationship between land use spatial planning and regional planning, land informatization development, public participation, urban sprawl, and sustainable development; (5) the themes show 8 evolutionary paths related to the following four topics: ecosystem protection, climate and natural change, urban sprawl and agricultural development, and GIS development; (6) this paper proposes that strengthening integration within disciplines, introducing new theories and methods, and sustainable land use will become future research directions requiring more land use planning attention.

Humans currently face a problematic ecological dilemma regarding economic growth. It is difficult to meet human needs by only studying economic growth created by artificial costs, and all countries need to pay attention to the task of improving the level of human welfare under the constraints of an ecological environment from the perspective of sustainable development. The focus of ecological wellbeing performance (EWP) is how to achieve the maximum welfare level output or achieve higher welfare level improvement with the fewest conversions of natural and ecological inputs. In this paper, we use the super-efficiency SBM model to measure the EWP of Chinese provinces and cities, traditional and spatial Markov probability transfer matrices are established based on time series analysis and spatial correlation analysis of the global Moran’s index, and the characteristics of the spatiotemporal variations of EWP are analyzed by comparing the matrices. The evolution trend for a certain future period is predicted, and the influences of geographical spatial patterns on the spatiotemporal evolution of EWP are discussed. On this basis, according to the calculation and analysis of the characteristics of China’s EWP, provinces and cities in China need to focus on improving their own resource utilization efficiency and strengthen environmental supervision to improve EWP. Finally, policy recommendations are put forward. First, special laws and regulations need to be introduced for resource utilization and ecological protection. The second recommendation is to promote and improve the mechanism of public participation in the rational utilization of resources and protection of the ecological environment. The third recommendation is to establish a dynamic monitoring system for resource utilization and ecological environmental protection. The fourth recommendation is to strengthen structural adjustment and accomplish high-quality economic development.

This paper examines the ecosystem service values of Jiangxi province, China using the benefit transfer approach. The land cover dynamics results show that cropland and forest are the main land cover types in Jiangxi province. Urban land drastically increased after 2000, expanding from 846.54 km² in 2000 to 2317.48 km² in 2015. Forest and water obviously decreased across the study periods. Consequently, the total ecosystem service values decreased from 37.91 × 10¹⁰ Yuan in 1995 to 35.27 × 10¹⁰ Yuan in 2015. The values showed a declining trend, especially during the 1995–2000 period. The largest declines in ecosystem service values were caused by decreases in forest and water cover. Regulating services experienced the largest declines in ecosystem services value. Moreover, water supply showed the largest decline in ecosystem service value between 1995 and 2015. Not surprisingly, food production increased in the whole period, especially in the 1995–2000 period. Forest and cropland played the most important roles in the total ecosystem service values of Jiangxi province. We then discussed the relationship among ecosystem services based on the ecosystem service trade-off degree. The results show that the dominant relationship among ecosystem services in Jiangxi province was synergy; thus synergy mostly occurred in all ecosystem services except for food production from 1995 to 2015. However, during the 1995–2000 period, trade-offs mainly existed in both food production and waste treatment. The proportion of synergy greatly increased in the 2000–2015 period, and the synergistic relationship between waste treatment and other ecosystem services increased. However, the trade-off relationship between food production and other ecosystem services still has not improved, which should be concerned in the future. Changes in the percentage share of cropland showed a declining trend; thus, the potential risk of cropland loss should be monitored.

The cultivated land-use transition (CLUT) is the morphological result of changes in the cultivated land-use mode over time, and the result of the interaction and mutual restriction of the human land system. This paper applies a “spatial–functional” integrated framework to understand the structure and functioning of CLUTs, and quantitatively evaluates and visualizes CLUTs in the major grain-producing area in southern China. The results show that (1) the comprehensive CLUT index in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River changed from 0.0480 to 0.0711 from 2001 to 2019 and indicated significant differences in the transition index between different regions. (2) The CLUT identified a positive aggregation effect under a 5% significance during the period, and the agglomeration degree of the spatial and functional transitions strengthened, which increased from 0.3776 to 0.4673 and from 0.2127 to 0.2952, respectively. (3) The gravity center of the CLUT demonstrated a pattern of migration from the southwest to the northeast, and the migration speed of the gravity center decreased from 2.9401 km/year to 1.2370 km/year. The migration direction of the gravity center for the spatial transition is opposite to the functional transition, and the migration speed of the gravity center for the spatial and functional transitions decreased from 8.3573 km/year to 1.0814 km/year, and from 3.2398 km/year to 1.0254 km/year, respectively. To address this transition, policymakers should formulate differentiated policies to promote the sustainable use of cultivated land through the spatial and functional transition of major grain-producing areas.