Cultural Ecosystem Services (CESs), as non-material benefits and well-being provided by ecosystems to humans, possess the ability to bridge nature and human society and interpret their complex interrelationships. Coastal areas are regions with concentrated human activities, where coastal zones are often subject to human development, pollution, and degradation. Compared to other ecosystems, coastal ecosystems face greater pressures and threats, and the cultural services they provide are more vulnerable. Research on coastal ecosystem cultural services needs to consider ecosystem vulnerability and find ways to protect and restore ecosystem functions. Therefore, this paper explores the intrinsic logical system and feasibility of guiding natural resource management and enhancing human well-being through coastal CESs, discussing related research data acquisition, method analysis, and perceptual application. Based on this, this paper analyzes the development trends of coastal CESs in natural resource management and enhancing human well-being from aspects such as biodiversity, human–nature interaction processes, cultural heritage conservation, local economic development, and community management. Finally, it proposes advancing the in-depth research of coastal CESs from the perspectives of integrating multi-source data, interdisciplinary development, and incorporating CESs into policy making, providing theoretical support for the systematic study of rational resource utilization and sustainable ecosystem development.

Rural tourism is a new point of growth for tourism and the economy in the context of the new normalization of the economy and is of great significance in achieving the complementary coordination and integration of urban and rural areas, promoting rural transformation, and increasing farmers’ incomes. The trends of rural tourism development mechanisms studied on a spatial scale can be used to interpret the sustainable development of rural tourism from different perspectives. Based on the data of key rural tourism villages in China’s Yellow River Basin (hereinafter referred to as the Yellow River Basin), kernel density estimation and spatial hot spot clustering methods were used in the present study to analyze the spatial distribution pattern and sustainable development mechanisms of these villages. The results showed that the spatial distribution of the key villages presents greater concentrations in the west and south than in the east and north, respectively. The spatial distribution of the key villages was found to be primarily affected by factors such as historical culture, transportation locations, economic level, and topography. Finally, the sustainable development mechanisms of rural tourism are proposed, and corresponding suggestions are provided from the perspectives of sustainable livelihoods, operation management, and marketing.

Integrating the flow of supply and demand of ecosystem services (ESs) into the ecological security pattern (ESP) of coastal ecosystems with extremely fragile ecological backgrounds and contradictory human–land relationships is beneficial to the coordinated development of human–land systems. However, existing studies ignore the issue of scales of supply–demand linkages, making the ESP not properly guide sustainable development. Based on ESs delivery chain theory and landscape ecology approaches, we developed a sustainable development framework consisting of coupled microscopic natural–social systems. The method was tested using data from the Liao River Delta. In this study area, the natural supply potential and demand mapping distribution of key ESs were assessed to identify ecological sources in the Liao River Delta, a typical coastal zone in northern China. The resistance surface based on land use type assignment was modified using hydrological connectivity frequency and nighttime light intensity. Ecological corridors were extracted and optimized using a minimum cumulative resistance model and connectivity evaluation. The study found that the high supply area and the high demand reflection area are not consistent in location and supply level. Ecological source areas are evenly distributed, accounting for 12% of the total area. The ecological corridors are mainly concentrated in the west and southeast and do not cross the built-up areas in the east. This ESP framework safeguards the local demand for natural products and the natural potential to maintain services over the longer term and to a larger scale while informing the development of environmental management measures.

High-quality development is an innovative way to promote the sustainable development of the marine economy. This study uses China’s coastal areas as an example, constructing a research framework for the high-quality development of the country’s marine economy. The temporal and spatial variation in the high-quality development of China’s marine economy from 2006 to 2016 is explored utilizing the nuclear density estimation, entropy, and mean standard deviation classification methods. The results show the following: (1) the policy orientation of China’s high-quality marine economic development is obvious, and the focus of policy has changed from the pursuit of growth speed to growth quality; (2) a spatiotemporal differentiation is evident, with the coastal areas of the Yangtze River Delta continuing to be the hotspots of high-quality development. The Bohai rim and Pan Pearl River Delta areas feature a mixture of cold and hot spots, with multipolar spatial differentiation; (3) in terms of development stage, Guangdong, Shanghai, Shandong, Zhejiang, and Tianjin are at advanced levels. The intermediate-level areas consist of Fujian, Jiangsu, Hainan, and Liaoning, while Hebei and Guangxi are the primary-level areas.