XGBoost-SHAP Explains the Multi-Scale Drivers and Spatial Heterogeneity of Ecosystem Services in Liaoning Province

Currently, the degradation of global ecosystem services and the decline in biodiversity are pressing issues, and the conflict between ecological conservation and economic development in old industrial bases is intensifying. This study takes Liaoning Province, which exhibits a distinct ecological gradient, as its research area. By constructing a three-tier nested framework at the grid, county, and city levels, and combining spatial autocorrelation, GWR, SOM, and XGBoost-SHAP models, we assess the spatial differentiation, trade-offs and synergies, and multi-scale driving associations of five core ecosystem services. The results indicate that: ① ecosystem services exhibit a pattern characterized by “mountains in the east, water in the west, and a granary in the center, Wet mountains in the east, dry hills in the west, granary plains in the central region” with the intensity of spatial aggregation decreasing as the scale increases; ② food provisioning and regulating support services remain in a trade-off relationship, and service bundles shift from locally fine-grained differentiation to city-level functional aggregation; ③ riving associations exhibit significant scale-dependent differentiation, with factors exhibiting nonlinear thresholds and interactions. This study establishes a multi-scale analytical framework for ecosystem services in old industrial bases, providing a foundation for regional ecological restoration and coordinated development.