With increasing global integration, distant coupled human and natural systems have more interactions than ever before, which often lead to unexpected outcomes with profound implications for sustainability. The integrated framework of telecoupling (socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances) has been proposed to address such cross-border and cross-scale challenges, helping better evaluate and understand telecouplings. We first provide an introduction to the telecoupling framework, including components, definitions, and functions, and then offer an overview of the growing number of telecoupling studies. Particularly, we use three Chinese cases to illustrate the methods, results, significance, and implications of applying the telecoupling framework. We also point out some research gaps and critical unsolved questions in the applications. The telecoupling framework provides a powerful tool to incorporate feedbacks, trade-offs, and synergies across multiple coupled human and natural systems, and helps improve the understanding of distant interactions and the effectiveness of policies for socioeconomic and environmental sustainability across local to global levels.

Spatial planning system reform is a critical strategy to promote ecosystem civilization construction in China. In view of the new spatial planning system, how to coordinate human activities and protect ecological pattern as well as natural resources are critical to the reformation, which urgently requires multi-disciplinary perspectives and knowledge. Ecosystem services bridge the ecosystem and the human well-being, serving as an important tool for land spatial optimization and decision making to better conform with the ecological civilization. In the light of construction demands from the spatial planning system, this research investigates how ecosystem services may provide relevant support from multiple dimensions through intensive literature and theoretical analyses. Firstly, this paper clarifies ecosystem services' connection with spatial planning in terms of values and goal. Not only are ecosystem services a carrier of spatial planning to shape the value of natural resources, but they are a government choice for spatial planning to promote public welfare as well. Secondly, an in-depth analysis of ecosystem services' support is performed with functions and contents, which vary across planning hierarchy, including the national, provisional, urban, county and village/town levels. To be more specific, insights are gained into ways that ecosystem services may facilitate the strategic and policy-oriented function, the coordinative function, and the operational function, respectively. From a scale-effect perspective, the vertical coordination across planning levels that could be facilitated by ecosystem services is also discussed. Finally, facing the needs of horizontal coordination emphasized by "multiple planning integration", ecosystem services may play important roles in three aspects: fostering common values among different sectors, coordinating multiple stakeholders' interests, and improving spatial planning technology. Results give theoretical supports and possible paths to direct spatial planning reforms, which may help to expand the application of ecosystem services in policy making.

To explore the holistic governance of ecological environmental protection, China has started up a pilot project of "Ecological Province" construction since 1999. This is an important measure taken by the Chinese government to improve the ecological environment. Does this project affect carbon emissions? Answering this question can help us learn about the true effects of the "Ecological Province" construction project. Based on the provincial-level panel data from 2000 to 2015 in China, this paper focuses on exploring the effects using the methods of the quasi-natural experiment and counterfactual test. Moreover, this study tries to test the robustness of the effects using the methods of multi-stage DID model, propensity score matching-difference in difference model (PSM-DID model). The results show that: (1) "Ecological Province" construction project has a significant and robust effect on carbon emission reduction. (2) Its mechanism depends on several channels, including impeding the economic growth, protecting ecological environment and adjusting the industrial structure. (3) Nevertheless, there still exist some problems such as the regional disparity of implementing the project, the backward development of ecological industry and the lack of ecological innovation and technological progress. This study can provide a scientific basis for popularizing the experience of "Ecological Province" construction and promoting its effect on carbon emission reduction.

In view of the lack of comprehensive evaluation and analysis from the combination of natural and human multi-dimensional factors, the urban surface temperature patterns of Changsha in 2000, 2009 and 2016 are retrieved based on multi-source spatial data (Landsat 5, Landsat 8 satellite image data, POI spatial big data, digital elevation model, etc.), and 12 natural and human factors closely related to urban thermal environment are quickly obtained. The standard deviation ellipse method and spatial principal component analysis (PCA) method are used to analyze the effect of urban human residential thermal environment and the linkage of its influencing factors. The results show that: (1) During the 16 years from 2000 to 2016, the heat island area increased by 547 km², and the maximum surface temperature difference reached 10.1 ℃. The spatial distribution of urban heat island was mainly concentrated in urban built-up areas, such as industrial and commercial areas and densely populated urban centers. The spatial distribution pattern of heat island is gradually decreasing from the urban center to the suburbs. There were many high-temperature centers, such as Wuyi square business circle, Xingsha economic and technological development zone in Changsha County, Wangcheng industrial zone, Yuelu industrial concentration zone, and Tianxin industrial zone. (2) From 2000 to 2016, the main axis of spatial development of heat island maintained in the northeast-southwest direction. From 2000 to 2009, the center of gravity of heat island shifted 2.7 km to the southwest, and the deflection angle was 54.9°; the center of gravity of heat island shifted to the northeast by 4.8 km, and the deflection angle was 60.9°. On the whole, the change of spatial pattern of thermal environment in Changsha was related to the change of urban construction intensity. (3) Through the principal component analysis method, it was concluded that the factors affecting the urban thermal environment pattern of Changsha were landscape pattern, urban construction intensity and landform. (4) The promotion effect of human factors on the formation of heat island effect was obviously greater than that of natural factors. Under the comprehensive effect, the temperature would rise by 0.293 units. There are many factors influencing the urban human settlements thermal environment. Multi-source data could help to reveal the spatial pattern and evolution law of urban thermal environment, deepen the understanding of the causes of urban heat island effect, and clarify the correlation and degree between human and natural factors, so as to provide scientific supports for the improvement of the quality of urban human settlements.

It is of vital importance to construct an ecological security network that considers both the ecological protection and the economic growth to ensure the sustainable development in waterfront cities. Based on the ecological and industrial data of Jiujiang city, we develop a comprehensive ecological security evaluation framework using the minimum cumulative resistance (MCR) model and the Duranton and Overman (DO) index. Specifically, the MCR is applied to examine the ecological landscape pattern while the DO index is introduced to analyze the degree of industrial agglomeration in continuous large areas and economic production zones. Subsequently, the eco-economic strategic nodes and green infrastructure belts are identified based on spatial conflicts between the ecological landscape patterns and economic production zones. The results demonstrate that: (1) Jiujiang city contains 29 important ecological sources with a total area of 7323 km². The areas with high-value of ecological security resistance account for 39.69%, which are distributed in the contiguous areas in the central and eastern parts of the city. In contrast, the low-value areas are on the city's periphery where there were fewer connected transition areas, which exhibit a spatially polarized "center-periphery" ecological landscape pattern. (2) The economic production zone is close to water sources, which presents spatial patterns of small-scale agglomeration and large-scale dispersion. The average length and number of agglomeration intervals are decreasing in heavily polluted, lightly polluted, and moderately polluted industries. (3) By analyzing the ecological sources, the resistance surface as well as the economic production zone, we determined ecological corridors with a length of 685.57 km and 25 eco-economic strategic nodes. As such, 18 important green infrastructure belts with a total length of 424.53 km and 26 regular green infrastructure belts with a total length of 662.46 km are designed to increase connectivity and maintain ecological processes. All of these elements constitute a "honeycomb" pattern of the ecological security network in Jiujiang city. This study expands the agglomeration economy perspective of the traditional ecological security network construction framework, and explores the data fusion of different scales. The study could contribute to scientific references for environmental management and regional sustainable development.