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Sustaining food production, water quality, soil retention, flood, and climate regulation in agricultural landscapes is a pressing global challenge given accelerating environmental changes. Scenarios are stories about plausible futures, and scenarios can be integrated with biophysical simulation models to explore quantitatively how the future might unfold. However, few studies have incorporated a wide range of drivers (e.g., climate, land-use, management, population, human diet) in spatially explicit, process-based models to investigate spatial-temporal dynamics and relationships of a portfolio of ecosystem services. Here, we simulated nine ecosystem services (three provisioning and six regulating services) at 220 × 220 m from 2010 to 2070 under four contrasting scenarios in the 1,345-km² Yahara Watershed (Wisconsin, USA) using Agro-IBIS, a dynamic model of terrestrial ecosystem processes, biogeochemistry, water, and energy balance. We asked (1) How does ecosystem service supply vary among alternative future scenarios? (2) Where on the landscape is the provision of ecosystem services most susceptible to future social-ecological changes? (3) Among alternative future scenarios, are relationships (i.e., trade-offs, synergies) among food production, water, and biogeochemical services consistent over time? Our results showed that food production varied substantially with future land-use choices and management, and its trade-offs with water quality and soil retention persisted under most scenarios. However, pathways to mitigate or even reverse such trade-offs through technological advances and sustainable agricultural practices were apparent. Consistent relationships among regulating services were identified across scenarios (e.g., trade-offs of freshwater supply vs. flood and climate regulation, and synergies among water quality, soil retention, and climate regulation), suggesting opportunities and challenges to sustaining these services. In particular, proactive land-use changes and management may buffer water quality against undesirable future climate changes, but changing climate may overwhelm management efforts to sustain freshwater supply and flood regulation. Spatially, changes in ecosystem services were heterogeneous across the landscape, underscoring the power of local actions and fine-scale management. Our research highlights the value of embracing spatial and temporal perspectives in managing ecosystem services and their complex interactions, and provides a system-level understanding for achieving sustainability of the food–water–climate nexus in agricultural landscapes.

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) provides a potentially useful tool for decision‐making in natural area management. Provisioning and regulating ES often occur in “bundles” that are cohesive because of coprovisioning or codependence. We asked whether individual preferences for cultural benefits also define service bundles. Data from a large survey of visitor preferences (n = 3,131 respondents) from all 19 South African National Parks indicated five bundles of cultural ecosystem services: (1) “natural history,” (2) “recreation,” (3) “sense of place,” (4) “safari experiences,” and (5) “outdoor lifestyle.” Trade‐offs and synergies between bundles of services depended on the ecosystem providing them and on alignment between demand for services and the supply of particular service bundles in specific ecosystems. Our results show that identifying demand for multiple services can both help us to understand why people visit and value protected areas, and better inform the management choices that influence service provision.

On 25 September, 2015, world leaders met at the United Nations in New York, where they adopted the Sustainable Development Goals. These 17 goals and 169 targets set out an agenda for sustainable development for all nations that embraces economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection. Now, the agenda moves from agreeing the goals to implementing and ultimately achieving them. Across the goals, 42 targets focus on means of implementation, and the final goal, Goal 17, is entirely devoted to means of implementation. However, these implementation targets are largely silent about interlinkages and interdependencies among goals. This leaves open the possibility of perverse outcomes and unrealised synergies. We demonstrate that there must be greater attention on interlinkages in three areas: across sectors (e.g., finance, agriculture, energy, and transport), across societal actors (local authorities, government agencies, private sector, and civil society), and between and among low, medium and high income countries . Drawing on a global sustainability science and practice perspective, we provide seven recommendations to improve these interlinkages at both global and national levels, in relation to the UN’s categories of means of implementation: finance, technology, capacity building, trade, policy coherence, partnerships, and, finally, data, monitoring and accountability.

Rapid urbanisation generates risks and opportunities for sustainable development. Urban policy and decision makers are challenged by the complexity of cities as social–ecological–technical systems. Consequently there is an increasing need for collaborative knowledge development that supports a whole-of-system view, and transformational change at multiple scales. Such holistic urban approaches are rare in practice. A co-design process involving researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders, has progressed such an approach in the Australian context, aiming to also contribute to international knowledge development and sharing. This process has generated three outputs: (1) a shared framework to support more systematic knowledge development and use, (2) identification of barriers that create a gap between stated urban goals and actual practice, and (3) identification of strategic focal areas to address this gap. Developing integrated strategies at broader urban scales is seen as the most pressing need. The knowledge framework adopts a systems perspective that incorporates the many urban trade-offs and synergies revealed by a systems view. Broader implications are drawn for policy and decision makers, for researchers and for a shared forward agenda.

Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of Ecosystem services (ES), along with the trade-offs and synergies among different services, is crucial for effective ecosystem management and sustainable regional development. This study focuses on Wensu, Xinjiang, China, as a case study to address these challenges. ES and their trade-offs were systematically assessed from 1990 to 2020. Explainable machine learning models (XGBoost-SHAP) were employed to quantify the nonlinear effects and threshold effects of ES trade-offs, with specific attention to identifying their driving factors. (1) From 1990 to 2020, water yield (WY) and soil conservation (SC) exhibited an inverted \"N\"-shaped downward trend in Wensu County: mean annual WY decreased from 22.99 mm to 21.32 mm, and SC per unit area declined from 1440.28 t/km² to 1351.3 t/km². Conversely, windbreak and sand fixation (WS) showed an \"N\"-shaped increase from 2.32×10⁷ t to 3.11×10⁷ t. Habitat quality (HQ) initially improved then deteriorated, with values of 0.596, 0.603, 0.519, and 0.507 sequentially. (2) Relationships between WY-WS, WY-HQ, WS-HQ, SC-WS, and SC-HQ were primarily tradeoffs, whereas WY-SC interactions were synergistic. Trade-offs for SC-HQ, WY-HQ, and WS-HQ were stronger, while WY-SC trade-offs were weaker. (3) The XGBoost-SHAP model revealed land use type (Land), precipitation (Pre), and temperature (Tem) as dominant drivers of trade-offs, demonstrating nonlinear responses and threshold effects. For instance, WY-SC trade-offs intensified when precipitation exceeded 17 mm, while temperature thresholds governed WY-HQ trade-off/synergy transitions. This study advances the identification of nonlinear and threshold effects in ES trade-off drivers. The model's interpretability in capturing these complexities clarifies the mechanisms underlying ES dynamics. Findings are generalizable to other ecologically vulnerable regions, offering critical insights for ecosystem management and conservation strategies in comparable environments.

A clear understanding of the relationships among multiple ecosystem services (ESs) is the foundation for sustainable urban ecosystem management. Quantitatively identifying the factors that influence ES trade-offs and synergies can contribute to deepening ES research, from knowledge building to decision making. This study simulated soil conservation, water yield and carbon sequestration in Beijing, China, from 2015–2018. The spatial trade-offs and synergies of these three ESs within the five major river basins in Beijing were explored using geographically weighted regression. Furthermore, geographical detector was applied to quantitatively identify the driving mechanism of the environmental factors for the ES trade-offs and synergies. The results show the following: (1) the spatial relationships between soil conservation and water yield, as well as between water yield and carbon sequestration, were mainly trade-offs. There was a spatial synergy between soil conservation and carbon sequestration. (2) Regarding the spatial trade-off/synergy between soil conservation and water yield in Beijing, the dominant influencing factor was temperature/elevation, and the dominant interactions of the spatial trade-off and synergy between these two ESs in Beijing and the Chaobai River Basin are all manifested in the superposition of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration, temperature, and elevation. (3) Topographic factors were the dominant factors influencing the spatial relationship between soil conservation and carbon sequestration in Beijing and its five major river basins. As a result of the distribution of water systems and hydrological characteristics of the basins, differences were observed in the effects of different combinations of interaction factors on the spatial relationship between these two ESs in different basins. (4) Temperature had the strongest explanatory power in terms of the spatial trade-offs and synergies between water yield and carbon sequestration. The interactions between precipitation and temperature and between precipitation and elevation were the dominant interactions affecting the spatial relationship between water yield and carbon sequestration in Beijing. Overall, the explanatory power of influencing factors on the trade-offs and synergies and the degree of interaction between factors coexist in different basins with consistency and differences. Therefore, understanding the quantitative characteristics of basin-scale spatial trade-offs and synergies between ESs is important for ecosystem management and the promotion of synergy in different basins.

Rapid socio-economic development has had a significant impact on land use/cover (LULC) changes, which bring great pressure to the ecological environment. LULC changes affect ecosystem services by altering the structure and function of ecosystems. It is of great significance to reveal the internal relationship between LULC changes and ecosystem service value (ESV) for the protection and restoration of ecological environments. In this study, based on the spatial and temporal evolution of ecological service values in the Manas River basin from 1980 to 2020 and considering ecological and economic benefits, we coupled the gray multi-objective optimization model (GMOP) and patch-generating land-use simulation (PLUS) model (GMOP–PLUS model) to optimize the LULC structure under three scenarios (a natural development scenario, ND; ecological priority development scenario, (EPD); and balanced ecological and economic development scenario, EED) in 2030, and analyzed the trade-offs and synergies in the relationships among the four services. We found that from 1980 to 2020, farmland and construction land expanded 2017.90 km2 and 254.27 km2, respectively, whereas the areas of grassland and unused land decreased by 1617.38 km2 and 755.86 km2, respectively. By 2030, the trend of LULC changes will be stable under the ND scenario, the area of ecological land will increase by 327.42 km2 under the EPD scenario, and the area of construction land will increase most under the EED scenario, reaching 65.01 km2. From 1980 to 2020, the ESV exhibited an upward trend in the basin. In 2030, the ESV will increase by 7.18%, 6.54%, and 6.04% under the EPD, EED, and ND scenarios, respectively. The clustering of the four services is obvious in the desert area and around the water system with “low–low synergy” and “high–high synergy”; the plain area and mountainous area are mainly “high–low trade-off” and “low–high trade-off” relationships. This paper provides a scientific reference for coordinating economic development and ecological protection in the basin. It also provides a new technical approach to address the planning of land resources in the basin.

The Yellow River Basin (YRB) occupies an important position in China’s socioeconomic development and ecological conservation efforts. Understanding the spatiotemporal characteristics of the relationships among multiple ecosystem services (ESs) and their drivers is crucial for regional sustainable development and human-earth system coordination. This study simulated food production (FP), water yield (WY), net primary production (NPP), soil conservation (SC), and habitat quality (HQ) in the YRB from 2000 to 2020, and evaluated the spatial evolution and the relationship of ESs at the raster scale. Redundancy analysis was used to identify the impact of natural, socioeconomic, and landscape patterns on the relationship between ESs. The results demonstrated that the average HQ per unit area decreased by 18.10%, while SC, NPP, WY, and FP increased by 42.68%, 47.63%, 30.82%, and 67.10%, respectively, from 2000 to 2020. The relationship between ESs in the YRB was dominated by weak trade-offs and weak synergies at a temporal scale, with the trade-offs strengthened in the Upper Yellow River Basin (UYRB) and the Middle Yellow River Basin (MYRB), and synergies strengthened in the Lower Yellow River Basin (LYRB). At the spatial scale, the relationships between HQ and WY, HQ and SC, HQ and NPP, FP and SC, and FP and HQ were all dominated by trade-offs, while other ES pairs were mostly based on synergistic relationships. In the YRB, the relationships among ESs were mainly influenced by human disturbance, precipitation, and land-use and exploitation intensity. Specifically, the trade-offs among ESs in the UYRB were primarily affected by precipitation, and those in the MYRB and LYRB by human disturbance. The heterogeneity of the landscape could also effectively promote synergies among ESs. This study could provide insights into trade-offs and synergies among ESs and their driving forces and lay a foundation for ecological restoration and sustainable development of ESs in the YRB.

Understanding landscape multifunction trade-offs and synergies is fundamental to achieve the regional sustainable management and improving human well-being. Taking the Zhejiang Greater Bay Area as an example, this paper quantitatively evaluates residents’ carrying function (RC), food production function (FP), habitat maintenance function (HM), water conservation function (WC) and landscape aesthetic function (LA) in 2022. On the basis of constructing the multifunctional landscape model of the Bayesian belief networks, the key nodes that affect the landscape function are identified by analyzing the importance of nodes. Joint probability distribution, probabilistic reasoning and scenario simulation were used to explore the synergistic and trade-off relationship of landscape multifunction and its driving factors. The results show that: (1) The spatial heterogeneity of RC, FP, HM, WC and LA in the Greater Bay Area is significant. The distribution of RC and FP is relatively consistent, with high values concentrated in the northeastern plain and coastal areas, and low values distributed in the mountainous and hilly areas of the northwest and southwest. The distribution of HM, WC and LA is relatively consistent, showing a spatial pattern of high hills in the northwest and southwest mountains and low in the northeast plain and coastal areas. (2) There is a synergistic relationship between HM, WC and LA. There is a trade-off relationship between RC-WC, FP-HM and FP-LA. (3) Land use type and NDVI are the main factors affecting the synergistic relationship of landscape multifunctional. Population density and altitude are the main factors affecting the trade-off relationship. It is found that different drivers generate the same synergy (or trade-off) in different states, while the same drivers generate different synergy (or trade-off) in different states. This study has important theoretical and practical value for understanding the complex relationship between landscape multifunctionality and the differences in driving factors, and for proposing countermeasures and measures to improve landscape ecosystem management and human well-being.

Since the 21st century, cities have experienced rapid expansion, posing serious threats to the health of non-urban ecosystems. It is generally believed that continued urbanization will put increasing pressure on ecosystems. However, in recent decades, the degree of population agglomeration and ecological environment have simultaneously increased in China. This paper takes Fenhe River Basin as the study area, measures the spatial Gini coefficient of population distribution (Gini) and ecosystem services in 165 sub-basins from 2000 to 2020, and adopts two-way fixed effects model to study the impacts of population agglomeration on ecosystem services and its mechanism. The results show that population agglomeration is positively correlated with the overall benefit (OB) of ecosystem services, and the effect is moderated by vegetation coverage, slope and distance from market centre, only when the values are greater than 0.198, less than 6.62° and 17.90 km, respectively, will the positive effects become apparent. The phenomenon of ‘people withdrawing and vegetation entering’ makes population agglomeration have significant impacts on individual ecosystem services and trade-offs and synergies. In order to give better play to the positive effect, the population needs to migrate from areas with worse geographical conditions and farther away from market centres to better places, and the return of farmland to forests should be accelerated in areas with population concentration. Following the laws of nature to promote population agglomeration and vegetation restoration, so as to achieve a ‘win–win’ situation between economic development and ecological civilization construction through the optimization of resource allocation.