Coupling Landscape Patterns and Ecosystem Services With Sustainable Development Goals for Regional Sustainability: Evidence From the Yellow River Basin

ABSTRACT

Human activities are accelerating ecosystem degradation, making regional sustainability transitions increasingly urgent. Although the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a unified global framework for action, their implementation at the regional scale still lacks operational approaches for evaluating whether progress in human well‐being is matched by ecological improvement. Here, we develop an integrated framework that links SDG‐oriented human well‐being with an ecological composite index derived from landscape patterns and ecosystem services. Within this framework, coupling coordination degree (CCD) is used to quantify the alignment between the ecological and social subsystems, and boosted regression trees are applied to identify the drivers of spatial heterogeneity in this coordination state. Using 69 prefecture‐level cities in the Yellow River Basin (YRB) as a case study, we show that the SDG composite score improved substantially from 2000 to 2022, particularly in poverty reduction, education, employment, resource efficiency, and social equity, whereas SDG 13 (climate action) declined. Meanwhile, the ecological subsystem consistently lagged behind the social subsystem over the long term, especially in the middle and lower reaches, limiting overall coordination gains to a moderate level. Slope, GDP, NDVI, and precipitation emerged as the dominant drivers of the coordination pattern, highlighting the combined influence of natural constraints and development intensity. Based on CCD levels and their temporal trajectories, we further classify the 69 cities into four sustainability pathways and propose differentiated policy interventions. Our framework offers actionable guidance for the YRB and other resource‐dependent and ecologically fragile regions undergoing sustainability transitions.