Abstract: There are severe conflicts between grain production and ecological benefits, and how to explore the critical configurations of agricultural landscapes and natural habitats to clarify sustainable scenarios remains unclear. Thus, this study explored a transferable approach to generating the production possibility frontiers of trade-offs between grain production and ecological benefits (biodiversity, carbon sink, and water consumption) under unconstrained, ecological constraint, and agricultural and ecological constraint scenarios, and identified the threshold and safety area for landscape optimization in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region of China. When reaching the Pareto optimality of trade-off frontiers, the grain yield and biodiversity increased by 10%–17%, the grain yield and carbon sink increased by 15%–48%, and the grain yield and water consumption improved by 4%–25%. The grain production and ecological benefits were outside the safety area in the BTH region, and the landscape optimization strategy was different for each trade-off. Both the food and biodiversity security can be further improved through increasing by 2.7% of cropland in the BTH region. The land use strategy of converting 6.8% of the cropland of the BTH region into forest land can promote carbon sink security. Although the land use strategy of converting 2.3% of the cropland of the BTH region into grassland can promote water security, more effort should be focused on technological innovation. This study highlights that landscape optimization will promote landscape multifunctionality and provides quantitative landscape optimization thresholds and safety boundaries for improving grain production and ecological benefits.

Keywords: Production possibility frontiers; Trade-off; Landscape optimization; Grain production; Ecological benefits

Highlights

• Landscape pattern optimization can mitigate the trade-offs between grain production and ecological benefits.

• The thresholds of trade-off production possibility frontiers and the safety boundaries for optimization were identified.

• Different constrained scenarios were developed to compare the effects of local ecological and agricultural policies.

• The grain yield and carbon sink increased the most with 15%–48% when reaching the Pareto optimality.

• Converting part of the cropland to forest or grassland is essential for carbon sink and water security.

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China; National Key Research and Development Program of China; and Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund.

Source：Qinghua Liu, Xiao Sun*, Qingxu Huang, et al. Optimizing the landscape in grain production and identifying trade-offs between ecological benefits based on production possibility frontiers: A case study of Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region. Journal of Environmental Management, 2025, 377, 124583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.124583