The construction of an ecological security pattern (ESP) is one of the basic methods to protect regional ecological security and enhance people’s well-being. In the case of Anhui province, located in the Yangtze River Delta region of China, regional ecological sources were assessed and recognized in terms of ecosystem services, and regional ESP was then constructed based on circuit theory. Current density was applied to analyze the significance of patches and corridors and recognize sticking points, and thereby strategies were introduced to optimize regional ESP. Results of ecosystem services function assessment showed that there were 47 ecological patches, 107 ecological corridors, 16 pinch points, and six sticking points in the ESP of Anhui province. The watershed of the Yangtze and Huai rivers divides the ESP of the northern and southern Anhui, which has huge landscape spatial heterogeneity. Areas with relatively good ecological resources were basically located between Dabie Mountain area in the west and the low hilly area in the south of Anhui, with mostly woodland and farmland as ecological sources. However, cities in the northern Anhui, also in the north of the watershed of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, face severe situations in terms of environmental protection. This study conducted spatial analyses on ESP with different thresholds and proposed to classify different ESPs according to ecological control. This helps to alleviate the contradiction between economic development and environmental protection, and improve the supply capacity of regional ecosystem services, in order to satisfy the regional demand for ecosystem services. Meanwhile, this study offers more methods to construct regional ESP and introduces targeted measures to improve connectivity, which is of practical guidance for the connectivity and optimization of ecological patterns.

Rapid urbanization has caused changes in climate and environment and threatened the ecosystem with multiple risks. The ecosystem services capacity has shown a downward trend accordingly. It is significant to explore the spatio‐temporal evolution of land use and ecosystem services value (ESV) in mountainous counties at small scales, as it coordinates economic growth and ecological protection, and promotes sustainable and high‐quality development. Based on the SD‐PLUS model, the study simulated three scenarios of land‐use change in Qianshan city from 2019 to 2035: high‐growth rate, medium‐growth rate, and low‐growth rate, and studied the impacts of land‐use change on the ESV. Results showed that: (1) Under the three scenarios, the construction land in the study area increased significantly, the forest and water have a decreasing trend, and the scale of gardens partly increased. (2) In the urban built‐up areas, a significant amount of construction land is centrally expanded, whereas, in mountainous regions, construction land exhibits sporadic point expansion. And among the various factors that influence land‐use change, the impact of roads at all levels is the most significant, followed by elevation. (3) The overall ESV shows a downward trend, with the low‐growth rate scenario dropping the least (4.91%). The value distribution changes little at the space scale, and different regions demonstrate different degrees of change. From the perspective of value type, the service values of water conservation and waste treatment are significantly reduced, while that of food production is relatively stable; from the perspective of various lands with their ESV, cultivated land and forest remain stable. The study results can provide technical ideas for the coordinated economic development and ecological protection of mountainous cities and boost the implementation of green development.

Chinese traditional villages, as the space carriers of Chinese excellent traditional culture, are a nonrenewable cultural heritage with rich value connotations. The primary consideration for the protection of the authenticity of traditional villages as a historical and cultural heritage is the continuation of spatial authenticity. The inheritance and shaping of traditional characteristics requires the study of the laws of traditional villages’ spatial form. Spatial texture is an important landscape resource for traditional villages, and it is also a space carrier to display and carry the historical and cultural characteristics of the village. However, the current practice of village planning and construction has destroyed this original spatial texture, resulting in a rupture of the inheritance of traditional characteristics of village space. The fundamental reason lies in the lack of emphasis on the subjectivity and regularity of village space and the lack of quantitative analysis and planning application of the inherent laws of spatial texture. Based on the integration of inheritance and transformation, this research proposes to use the advantages of digitization, visualization, and dynamics in parametric technology to quantitatively analyze the internal laws of the village spatial texture and assist the planning and design of the village spatial texture, in order to effectively promote the benign inheritance and optimization of the traditional characteristics of the village spatial texture which makes the planned spatial texture both traditional and modern. The research results show that (1) the parametric-based planning technology can better analyze the existing laws of the village spatial texture in a comprehensive, quantitative, and precise manner. (2) The parametric technology has a relatively high value in the planning and design of the village spatial texture. Due to strong applicability, it can invert the spatial form of the village and optimize the planning scheme by adjusting parameters and rules. (3) Although the parametric planning and design party has certain artificial intelligence, it cannot completely replace the human brain. The planning scheme generated by the method cannot be directly applied but can be used to assist the design scheme. It needs to be adjusted and corrected via the subjective initiative of people and wider participation.

The ecological civilisation has become a consensus on society development in China, and is an inevitable requirement for building a community with a shared future for mankind. Exploring the changes in land use in mountainous counties is practically required to achieve a sustainable economy and society and build a beautiful China. Aiming at the contradiction between the expansion of urban construction land and the ecological environment, the research takes a typical mountainous city, Qianshan city, as an example. Under the three scenarios guided by the two development concepts: protect cultivated land priority and protect ecological priority, the research applies the SD model to predict the demand for land use, the EL-CA model to simulate the spatial evolution of land use, and the gravity centre model to analyse the city’s future development. Results show that: (1) In the scenario of protect cultivated land priority, ecological land is severely fragmented, and part of it is converted into cultivated land; in the scenario of protect ecological land priority, the ecological land nearby built-up area is largely encroached, and the others may be spottily encroached by construction land; (2) In different development scenarios, cities will mainly expand to the south in the future, and the northern part of the city will generally undertake the protection of ecological and cultivated land. The research simulates the evolution process of future land use in mountainous cities; it provides a theoretical reference for spatial planning for national land and the implementation of green development and technical guidance for urban expansion and ecological coordination.

Assessing the ecosystem resilience and risks of metropolitan areas helps coordinate ecological environmental protection, reduce landscape ecological risks, and enhance ecological resilience. Existing studies often analyze the trade-offs and synergies between landscape ecological risks and ecological resilience within specific regions based on administrative divisions. However, the mechanisms underlying these trade-offs and synergies across different scales remain unclear. This study focuses on the Hefei Metropolitan Area in China, constructing quantitative assessment models for ecological resilience and landscape ecological risks from a landscape pattern perspective. It systematically examines the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of these two aspects from 2010 to 2020 across multiple scales, including grid, county, and city levels. Pearson correlation analysis and bivariate spatial autocorrelation are employed to investigate their spatial interactions. Furthermore, a coupling coordination model is used to identify trade-offs and synergies between the two at different scales. Finally, based on the interaction analysis, tailored zoning regulation strategies are proposed. Key findings reveal: (1) Over the past decade, the landscape ecological risk in the Hefei Metropolitan Circle has exhibited characteristics of “stable overall pattern with localized differentiation,” where high-risk zones are predominantly concentrated in areas with elevated water body ratios. Ecological resilience exhibited a slight declining trend, with an overall low resilience level. High-resilience zones experienced a significant reduction of 50.6% in area, while low-resilience zones expanded toward the core urbanization areas. (2) A robust negative correlation emerged between ecological resilience and landscape risk, intensifying significantly with finer spatial scales. Crucially, the recoverability dimension exerted the most potent counteracting effect on risk propagation. (3) The mean coupling coordination degree between ecological resilience and ecological risk across multiple scales registered below 0.5, with spatial heterogeneity manifesting as “higher in the southwest and generally low in other areas.” Coordination zones are sporadically distributed within southwest woodlands, while dysregulation zones concentrate predominantly in water bodies and urbanization-intensive belts. (4) Collectively, low-resilience/high-risk zones clustered in waterbody-dense areas, contrasting with high-resilience/low-risk clusters predominantly occupying forested biomes. This spatial divergence exhibited scale-dependent amplification under finer resolutions. Synthesizing multiscale correlations and coupling coordination patterns, we delineate a four-type governance typology. This study provides both theoretical underpinnings and practical pathways for multi-scale collaborative governance to enhance regional ecological resilience and advance sustainable development.

Good urban design helps mitigate carbon dioxide emissions and is important for achieving global low-carbon goals. Previous studies have mostly focused on the two-dimensional level of urban socio-economic activities, urban land use changes, and urban morphology, neglecting the importance of the three-dimensional spatial structure of cities. This study takes 30 cities in East China as an example. By using urban building data and carbon emission datasets, four machine learning algorithms, BP, RF, CNN, and CNN-RF, are established to build a CO₂ emission prediction model based on three-dimensional spatial structure, and the main influencing factors are further studied. The results show that the CNN-RF model performed optimally in both the testing and validation phases, with the coefficient of determination (R²), root mean square error (RMSE), and residual prediction deviation (RPD) of 0.85, 0.82; 10.60, 22.32; and 2.53, 1.92, respectively. Meanwhile, in the study unit, S, V, NHB, AN, BCR, SCD, and FAR have a greater impact on CO₂ emissions. This indicates a strong correlation between urban three-dimensional spatial structure and carbon emissions. The CNN-RF model can effectively evaluate the relationship between them, providing strategic support for spatial optimization of low-carbon cities.