Under the continuous guidance of the principle that “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets,” it is essential to deepen our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns and evolutionary trajectories of rural ecological carrying capacity in the Dongting lake ecological economic zone. Such understanding holds strategic importance for safeguarding regional ecological security and formulating high-quality pathways for ecological civilization development.

Based on county-level panel data from 2012 to 2021, and supported by ArcGIS and GeoDa, this study integrates the entropy method with exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) to systematically investigate the temporal evolution, spatial differentiation, and clustering characteristics of rural ecological carrying capacity in the region.

1) rural ecological carrying capacity showed a fluctuating upward trend from 2012 to 2021, and the contribution of the four subsystems were ranked as follows: ecological resilience, human support capacity, resource carrying capacity, and environmental carrying capacity; 2) spatially, a distinct “low-in-the-middle and high-at-both-ends” pattern was evident, with high-value areas concentrated in the eastern and western hilly-mountainous zones, and low-value areas clustered in urban centers and densely populated rural settlements; 3) from 2012 to 2021, the number of high-capacity counties increased, while low-capacity counties declined, indicating steady regional improvement; 4) significant positive spatial autocorrelation was observed across the period, except for an anomaly in 2015; H-H clusters remained stable, L-L clusters appeared intermittently, and L-H and H-L types occurred only sporadically.

Although the rural ecological carrying capacity of the Dongting lake ecological economic zone continued to improve, its overall level remained relatively low, with pronounced inter-county disparities and marked spatial imbalance. We should strengthen regional ecological coordination and inter-county resource complementarity, enhance environmental carrying capacity and ecological resilience, advance non-point source pollution control, improve ecological infrastructure, and implement targeted restoration in weak areas. Meanwhile, we will refine zonal enhancement strategies and evaluation frameworks to amplify the ecological spillover effects of high-value areas, thereby promoting sustained improvements in rural ecological carrying capacity and coordinated ecological-economic-social development.

With the acceleration of urbanization, ecological and environmental problems are becoming increasingly prominent. This article aimed to provide a reference for the realization of the “integrated” construction of new urbanization and ecological civilization.

Based on the land use remote sensing monitoring and statistical yearbook data in 2010, 2015 and 2018, the article measured the spatial-temporal evolution pattern of the new urbanization and ecosystem service value (ESV) in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration, and the spatial correlation characteristics of the two were analyzed by using bivariate spatial autocorrelation. Furthermore, the impact of different new urbanization levels on the spatial differentiation of ecosystem service value (ESV) was determined from a global and local perspective by using ordinary least squares, spatial regression and geographically weighted regression models.

1) The levels of new urbanization in the plain area of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan urban agglomeration are significantly higher than that in the mountainous area. The ecosystem service value (ESV) is significantly reduced during the study period, the spatial distribution is characterized by “low center and high surroundings” in general, and the two showed opposite spatial distribution patterns. 2) In addition to social urbanization, there is a significant spatial dependence effect between different new urbanization levels and the average ESV, and a negative externality is generated. 3) We found that the spatial error model is better than others for explaining the spatial relationship between ESV and new urbanization. Economic, spatial, and ecological urbanization are significant factors for ESV spatial differentiation, and their effects are negative, while the effect of spatial urbanization is the greatest. 4) The geographically weighted regression reveals that the effects of each factor have significant spatial non-stationarity.

Economic urbanization has a negative impact on average land ESV, which gradually decreases from the central region to the south and north. The impact of spatial urbanization on average land ESV is the largest, and the spatial heterogeneity is the strongest. Meanwhile, it shows a gradient-decreasing trend from northwest China to southeast China, indicating that the change of unit spatial urbanization level in northwest China leads to the largest decline of average land ESV. There is also a global negative correlation between ecological urbanization and average land ESV, which is generally decreasing from north to south and from east to west.