Abstract
Investigating large-scale spatial patterns of ecosystem services (ESs) and their underlying drivers can greatly contribute to policies-making and regional sustainability development. With water yield (WY), soil conservation (SC), and carbon sequestration (CS) as representative ESs, we aim to quantify their spatial patterns in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China, and to identify their driving factors, and to formulate sound environmental management strategies. Spatial geography and socioeconomic data from 2000 to 2020 were mined and a range of research methods, including multiscale geographic weighted regression, self-organizing maps, and linear discriminant analysis, were employed for such a purpose. Annual average WY, SC, and CS were 403 mm, 9897 t·km−1, and 1071 g·CO2·m−2. The three ESs examined exhibit spatial heterogeneity. WY exhibited significant patterns of variation along the north–south gradient, while SC and CS exhibited significant variation along the topographic gradient. In the context of high correlation of driving factors among ESs, WY and SC exhibited a greater sensitivity to natural factors (such as precipitation), while CS demonstrated a height sensitivity to human activities in addition to vegetation cover. Spatial heterogeneity is pronounced among the main driving factors of ESs. Three threshold equations were established to describe the manner in which driving factors of different regional ecosystem services undergo transformations, equations possessed a high level of credibility in this study (coincidence > 80 %). This study reveals spatial variations in ecosystem services and their natural and socio-economic drivers. More specifically, we quantitatively validated the threshold in the expression of ecosystem service drivers, establishing a strong scientific foundation for regional ecosystem conservation and management.