The unreasonable utilization and trade-offs of the multifunctional landscape is one of the important causes leading to ecological risk. Quantifying the relationship, heterogeneous process and driving mechanism between landscape function and human well-being can provide a scientific basis for achieving a win-win situation of regional development and ecological protection, and it is also an important issue for relevant scientific research. In this paper, we reviewed the current state of knowledge regarding landscape function and ecological risk, identified the feedback mechanisms among landscape change, landscape function, human well-being and ecological risk, constructed the ecological risk assessment framework based on landscape functions, and sorted out the key scientific issues and research trends. The interconnections between the multifunctional landscape, human well-being, and ecological risk comprise an important scientific issue in ecological risk assessment. However, there is a lack of understanding of the spatial-temporal characteristics of landscape function trade-offs, and there is also a lack of systematic and standardized methods for the identification and comprehensive evaluation of landscape functions. Exploring ecological risk management and the methodologies that integrate the two processes of nature and humanity is an inevitable trend for future research. Coupling landscape structure, function and process into ecological risk assessment, as well as focusing on the combination of human well-being, landscape function trade-off and ecological risk control policy design are important issues to be studied.

Mountain area accounts for a high proportion of the land area in China, and it is the focal area to solve the contradiction of imbalanced regional development, as well as an important source of ecosystem services. Therefore, this area has been facing long-term pressure and challenges in economic development and ecological protection. In this paper, we selected a rocky desertification mountain area, an active mountain area of new tectonic movement and a typical northern earth-rock mountain area, as Qian-Gui karst Mountain area, Hengduan Mountain area and Taihang Mountain area, as examples to represent three main types of mountain areas. Three representative types of ecosystem services, including NPP (Net Primary Productivity) as a support service, water conservation as a regulation service, and agricultural produce as a supply service, were incorporated into this study. Linear regression, correlation analysis and other methods were then used to investigate the spatial-temporal characteristics of the trade-offs and synergies in each of the three kinds of mountain areas during 1990-2015 in China. The analysis yielded three main conclusions for the three mountainous areas. (1) The agricultural produce supply service decreased relatively, while the support and regulation services of NPP and hydrological regulation increased significantly. (2) There was a synergistic relationship between NPP and the hydrological regulation services in the three mountainous areas. The synergistic relation in Qian-Gui karst Mountain area became enhanced, while those in Hengduan and Taihang Mountain areas became weakened, and the former was weakened to a greater extent. There was a trade-off between NPP, the hydrological regulation service and the agricultural produce supply service among the three mountainous areas. In particular, the trade-off between NPP and the agricultural produce supply service in Qian-Gui karst Mountain area became weaker, while those in Hengduan and Taihang Mountain areas were enhanced, and the latter was enhanced to a greater degree. (3) Significant spatial differentiation was evident in the trade-offs and synergies of ecosystem services among the three mountain areas.

Maintaining an adequate security level of cultivated land is essential for the healthy and sustainable survival of China’s large and growing population. We constructed a cultivated land security evaluation index system, combined with an improved TOPSIS method by taking into account the balance and stability of quantitative, qualitative, and ecological security. We applied this improved method to an evaluation of the state of cultivated land security and analyzed its spatiotemporal variation in Yingtan City (Jiangxi Province, China) from 1995 to 2015. The drivers of the changes in cultivated land security were investigated via a spatial regression model, which can eliminate the effect of spatial autocorrelation. The results showed that cultivated land security decreased rapidly from 1995 to 2005, although it tended to rise slowly in the subsequent period from 2005 to 2015. Areas deemed to be in a highly dangerous state were mainly distributed in the Yuehu District, while those that were secure appeared primarily in the southern mountainous area, with the area in a generally dangerous state extending to the west in the same direction as urban development. Among the examined drivers, social-economic factors and policy factors significantly influenced the cultivated land security. Our work suggests that government managers should take appropriate measures to improve cultivated land security according to its spatiotemporal variations and the underpinning drivers in this region.

Understanding the synergic relationship between the Grain for Green Program (GGP) and the agricultural eco-economic system is important for designing an optimized agricultural eco-economic system and developing a highly efficient structure of an agricultural industry chain and a resource chain. This study used Ansai County time series data from 1995 to 2014, applied vector autoregressive (VAR) models and used tools such as Granger causality, impulse response analysis and variance decomposition, to explore the synergy between the GGP and the agricultural eco-economic system. The results revealed a synergic and reciprocal relationship between the GGP and the agroeconomic system. The contribution of the GGP to the agroecosystem reached 34%, which was significantly higher than either its largest contribution to the agroeconomic system (20.8%) or its peak contribution to the agrosocial system (26.7%). The agroeconomic system had the most prominent influence on the GGP, with a year-round stable contribution of up to 55.3%. These results were consistent with reality. However, the impact of the GGP on the agricultural eco-economic system was weaker than the effect of the agricultural eco-economic system on the GGP. The lag of variable stationarity after the shock was relatively short, indicating that optimal coupling had not formed between the GGP and the agricultural eco-economic system. On the basis of enhancing the ecological functions, we should construct the agricultural industry-resource chain such that it focuses on promoting the effective utilization of resources in the region. In addition, the development of a carbon sink industry can be used to manifest the ecological values of ecological functions.