From imperial order to urban wilds: spatial fractures and localized drivers of cultural ecosystem services along the Beijing central axis

Linear cultural heritage corridors face increasing risks of spatial fragmentation during rapid urbanization. However, understanding the localized driving mechanisms of CES perception across such vast scales remains a critical challenge for integrating historic conservation with landscape planning. This study aims to quantify the spatial patterns of Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) along the Beijing Central Axis and its Extensions and to decouple global urbanization trends from local landscape drivers to reveal spatial non-stationarity in heritage perception. We utilized crowdsourced geotagged images from outdoor activity platforms spanning the 80-km corridor and constructed a spatially explicit framework integrating deep-learning image classification with Geographical Random Forest (GRF) to model the relationships between CES diversity and landscape features. Mapping revealed a pronounced “core–periphery” gradient: the historic core contributed 33% of the total CES perception intensity, whereas the Southern Extension formed a marked “perceptual fracture,” accounting for only 4%. Crucially, the GRF model revealed strong spatial non-stationarity in driving mechanisms. While urbanization intensity dominated the global trend, Distance to water emerged as an important local explanatory factor. The results indicate that even in areas lacking monumental architecture, water proximity may remain strongly associated with CES perceptions among outdoor enthusiasts, providing evidence for understanding the spatial connections between historical hydrological structures and contemporary CES perceptions. We propose differentiated management strategies: strengthening protection of the historic core, improving its connections with the ecological resources of the Northern Extension, and repairing the fragmented blue-green system and slow-mobility network of the Southern Extension through ecological-node creation and micro-renewal to enhance the perceptual continuity of the linear heritage corridor. This study offers a cost-effective, transferable, and spatially explicit analytical workflow for managing large-scale linear landscapes and emphasizes the importance of accounting for local heterogeneity in management.