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Global mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets to regional solution at different scales with structural effects. Because local ecosystem service has different functions to influence regional environment, it is unclear that land use structural effects on lowering emission intensity and mitigating air pollution, and it is debatable that the efficiency of mitigation of GHG emission can be improved by increasing what kind of ecological infrastructure at regional scale. We propose a systematic methodology on identification of trade-offs among structural impacts of land use change on emission intensity at regional scale through both qualitatively and quantitatively statistical analysis to clarify impacts of different land use on the mitigation of emission intensity. In particular to a region with some distinct constraints of natural resources, regional planning has to rely on scientific solutions for bridging the gap of emission mitigation target among multi-levels of administrations and at same time enhancing the optimal allocation of natural resource. In this case study, we qualitatively analyze the principle component among impact factors in a regional socio-economic-ecological system of Zhangye City (where is located at the middle reach of the Heihe River Basin) during 1980s–2010s, and quantitatively analyze the relationship between land use structure and emission intensity with controlling the effects of air contaminations. The analytical results prove that forest land has statistically significant impacts on the mitigation of emission intensity, more importantly, there are no statistical significant evidences showing that cultivated land and wetland have the same functions. It indicates that to identify key issues from those mixed impacts of land use structure at regional scale determines to promote an optimal path of natural resource allocation for reducing the GHG emission and air contaminations. It implies that mitigation of GHG sorely needs to take land use structure changes into consideration of the systematic research for scientifically improving regional planning and sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Distribution effect of carbon-food nexus for Chinese cities were explored. • Several methods built using the spatial decoupling index were proposed. • Chinese cities exhibited varying degrees of the distribution effect over the period. • Driver pattern of carbon-food nexus has changed over the years. Climate change mitigation and food security are sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. Despite extensive studies focused on the nexus of different SDGs and corresponding mechanisms, the distribution effect of carbon-food nexus and its driver has received limited attention, hindering policy making for balancing pathways of regional emission reduction and food production improvement. The present study explored the distribution effect (i.e., spatial performance) of carbon-food nexus from multiple perspectives (namely, status quo, drivers, and trend) based on a unique city-level dataset from 2005 to 2017. To this end, we proposed the spatial decoupling index, the corresponding decomposition and nonparametric models for capturing the multi-perspective distribution effects. The results indicated that Chinese cities, categorized by population scale and economic structure, exhibited varying degrees of distributions of carbon-food nexus over the period. Moreover, the driver pattern of carbon-food nexus was noted to have changed, wherein investment efficiency and scale were positive drivers. Furthermore, we showed that a more developed city's economy was statistically significantly associated with higher carbon emission and lower food production. Therefore, related stakeholders should take more actions such as strengthening capital accumulation and joint management of carbon intensity, for improving the distribution effect of the overall city-level carbon-food nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]