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• The urban development stage in Inner Mongolia was evaluated. • A comprehensive coupling analysis framework was constructed. • The coupling and coordination commonly shows a growing "basic coordination" state. • Five subsystems of ecological carrying capacity has different effects on the degree of coupling and coordination. With the rapid economic development, the imbalance between the economy and the environment is evident for Chinese cities. The coupling coordination degree (CCD) between urban land use efficiency (ULUE) and ecological carrying capacity (ECC) represents resource-intensive societies and is a significant tool for assessing sustainable development. Therefore, scientific evaluation of the coordinating relationship between ULUE and ECC is essential for optimizing the quality of urbanization and improving the state of the ecological environment. However, current studies on the CCD of ECC and ULUE lack quantitative assessment of the effect of ECC subsystems on overall CCD and have not yet evaluated the urban development stages. In this paper, taking 12 cities in Inner Mongolia as an example, a framework for CCD evaluation that includes comprehensive index analysis, coupling coordination quantification, coupling type identification, and coordination influence evaluation was created. This paper attempts to clarify the distinctions throughout cities and to propose distinctive development suggestions. The results indicate that the ULUE of Inner Mongolian cities has risen significantly, whereas their ECC levels fluctuate, growing at a slower rate than ULUE. As the level of coordination between the two systems increases, it changes from "basic disorders" to "basic coordination". In terms of spatial distribution, the CCD in Inner Mongolia has a pattern of "high in the northeast and low in the southwest". The pressure subsystem primarily performs a reverse blocking role in the CCD between ULUE and ECC, while the rest of the ECC subsystems exhibit different patterns over time. Additionally, the stages of urban development were investigated based on the temporal variations in ECC and ULUE, and several focused suggestions were provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper aims at quantifying the factors affecting vegetation growth in the western of Inner Mongolia, and judging the relative contribution of natural factors and man-made factors. • It is obtained through geodetectors (GD) that Rainfall is the most important driving factor, with the q-value of 0.77 and GDP also having a huge impact on vegetation growth, q-value of 0.64. • Different from most studies, human activity also has a positive effect on vegetation growth. • The relative contribution of human activities reached 51.75%, slightly exceeding the influence of natural factors. Vegetation is an essential component of terrestrial ecosystems, and understanding the drivers of vegetation change is of great importance for ecological management. In recent years, vegetation growth has increased under the combined effect of global warming and human activities in Inner Mongolia. The net primary productivity (NPP) was used as an indicator to study the spatial and temporal changes in vegetation in the Qimeng Region (QR). The residual trend analysis method was used to analyze the relative contributions of climate variations (CV) and human activities (HA) to NPP changes across the QR, while their drivers were explored using a geographical detector approach to quantify the driving forces of NPP. The results show that (1) NPP exhibited a fluctuating growth trend from 2003 to 2020, with an overall growth rate of 2.91%/year. (2) Precipitation, GDP and population density were the dominant driving factors for the spatial distribution of NPP. The combined explanatory power of any two dominant factors exceeded the power of any dominant individual factor, and the interaction between climate and human factors had a significant effect on NPP. (3) The change in NPP was influenced by the combined effect of HA and CV, accounting for 37.69% of the total area, with the relative contribution of HA being 51.75%. Finally, the relative contribution of human activities was slightly higher than that of climate change, confirming the initial success of the Grain to Green Program as well as ecological conservation projects. This paper provides a scientific basis for the local government to carry out the conversion of cropland to forest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]