Identifying the Relationships Among Ecosystem Services and Their Influencing Pathways in the Jialing River Basin: An Integrated Social‐Ecological Perspective

Exploring the interactive relationships and driving mechanisms of ecosystem services (ESs) is crucial for addressing urgent land use conflicts and related ecological and environmental challenges. Currently, the cross‐scale complex relationships between ESs, along with the intermediate mechanisms and processes that influence ESs, merit further research. This study explored the relationships among typical ESs at the county and small watershed scales. Subsequently, the conceptual framework of the social‐ecological system (SES) was introduced, and the partial least squares‐structural equation model (PLS‐SEM) was employed to comprehensively depict the influence pathways of each potential factor on ESs. Taking the Jialing River Basin (JRB) in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River as a typical study area, the results indicated that during the research period, the direction of the ESs relationships remained consistent at the dual scales, yet the intensities varied. There was a synergistic relationship between water yield (WY) and food production (FP), whereas the relationship between WY and soil conservation (SC), and between SC and FP, shifted from trade‐offs to synergies. Path analysis confirmed that potential factors collectively influence ESs through direct and indirect pathways, with landscape pattern acting as a mediating variable. In addition, the influence pathways at the small watershed scale were more intricate. In summary, this study highlights the need for decision‐makers to consider scale effects and the indirect effects of influencing factors when managing ESs, and offers reference information for guiding cross‐scale sustainable development in the JRB.