Social-ecological system changes in China from 1990 to 2018

Social-ecological systems provide a comprehensive scientific framework for understanding the complex processes and interactions between natural and human systems. However, system analysis with assumptions of reducibility, linear trade-offs or synergies and separability, and methods to detect social-ecological system transitions from time series are not sufficient to deal with the challenges of sustainable development. The interpretation of the spatial pattern is a potentially powerful choice for understanding social-ecological system transitions. Therefore, this study mapped social-ecological system archetypes by combining dominant function identification and K-means clustering methods. Results showed that Food Production Space, Economic Development Space and Ecological Service Space constituted the main archetypes of social-ecological systems, which covered about 8.7%, 1% and 78.1% of China respectively in 2018. Ecological-Food Space, Food-Economic Space, and Economic-Ecological Space reflected the key areas and hotspots for social-ecological system transitions, characterized by Economic Development Space expansion, Food Production Space reconstruction and Ecological Service Space contraction. Between 1990 and 2018, about 10.6% of the social-ecological system underwent transformation, mainly manifested in the transition of Food Production Space into Food-Economic Space (4.37 Mha) and Ecological-Food Space (8.34 Mha), and in the transition of Food-Economic Space to Food Production Space (9.16 Mha) and Economic Development Space (4.19 Mha). The pathways of social-ecological system transitions were mainly affected by factors such as institution, policy, capital, location, technology, population, cognition, and culture. These factors drove social-ecological system transitions through the mechanisms of community crisis response and individual interest induction. It suggested that sustainable development efforts should be focused on limiting the increase in driving factors that may weaken the critical feedback process, thereby maintaining the stability of the desired social-ecological systems.