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

A pronounced 'core-periphery' gradient in Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) perception was identified along the 80-km Beijing Central Axis, with the historic core contributing 33% of total CES intensity while the Southern Extension accounted for just 4%, revealing a significant perceptual fracture. The study utilized crowdsourced geotagged images and a spatially explicit framework combining deep-learning image classification with Geographical Random Forest (GRF) to model relationships between CES diversity and landscape features, uncovering strong spatial non-stationarity in driving mechanisms. While urbanization dominated global trends, local factors like proximity to water emerged as critical, suggesting historical hydrological structures still influence contemporary perceptions even without monumental architecture. Differentiated management strategies are proposed to enhance perceptual continuity along the corridor.

Liu, N., Zhang, X., Wu, Y., Fu, W., Wang, J., Pan, Y., Fan, Z., Wang, S., Tang, Q., & Yin, H. (2026). From imperial order to urban wilds: spatial fractures and localized drivers of cultural ecosystem services along the Beijing central axis. Ecosystem Services, 82, 101916. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2026.101916