Spatiotemporal Patterns and Fine-Scale Natural Capital Accounting for Land Resources in Heilongjiang Province, China

Global land degradation and the imbalance between human demand and land resource supply have become prominent challenges to regional ecological security. The compilation of a land resource balance sheet is helpful for the construction of an ecological civilization and the governance of food ecological security. The existing regional natural capital accounting mostly adopts a single model framework and an early correction coefficient, and the detailed urban-scale comprehensive physical quantity and value analysis is still insufficient. This study takes Heilongjiang Province (2001–2024) as the research area and uses MOD17A3HGF NPP, CLCD land cover data, and multi-source socio-economic statistical datasets to calculate dynamic urban-scale equilibrium and yield factors. Based on the three-dimensional ecological footprint and ecosystem service value, a comprehensive physical-monetary production-end land natural capital asset liability accounting framework is constructed. The results indicate that mountainous forest areas are the main carriers of natural capital surplus in the study area, while plain agricultural cities continue to face ecological deficits caused by intensive agriculture and animal husbandry development. According to the production-side accounting results, the research area shifted from being in an ecological deficit to having a surplus after 2002, and this transformation was influenced by natural forest protection policies and the transfer effect of ecological occupation space. Decoupling statistics indicate that simply limiting the scale of land occupation cannot completely eliminate the hidden risk of capital overdraft. Regulating the frequency of utilizing biological resources from the land has important reference significance for land management. The localized accounting workflow of this study provides a scientific reference for natural resource asset management and differentiated regional spatial control in China’s black soil areas and similar agricultural ecological barrier areas.