Rating and Spatial Pattern Analysis of Human–Land Symbiosis Relationship from an Ecological Perspective: A Case Study of the “Five Poles” Urban Agglomeration in the Yellow River Basin

The “Anthropocene” has witnessed unprecedented challenges to the sustainability of human development. Resolving the contradiction between humans and land and achieving coordinated development has become a pressing issue across many disciplines in the era of ecological civilization. This study adopts an ecological perspective to investigate the symbiotic relationship between humans and land in the “Five Poles” urban agglomerations of the Yellow River Basin. In this framework, ecosystem service value and human well-being are employed to quantify “human” and “land,” respectively. The Lotka–Volterra model is then applied as a structural analogy to quantify the dynamic interactions within this symbiotic relationship, treating ecosystem service value and human well-being as two interdependent systems with feedback mechanisms. For the “Five Poles” urban agglomerations in the Yellow River Basin, the ecosystem service and human well-being pressures, along with the symbiosis indices for the period 2011–2020, were calculated and categorized. The results were first subjected to a visual analysis to describe the spatial patterns. Subsequently, spatial autocorrelation analysis was employed to quantitatively investigate the clustering and heterogeneity of these patterns, thereby systematically elucidating the spatial characteristics of human–land symbiosis in the Yellow River Basin. The findings indicate that: (1) the human–land relationship in the Yellow River Basin has evolved from partial interaction to mutualism, reflecting improved coordination within the regional human–land system. (2) The evaluation of this relationship improved between 2011–2015 and 2016–2020. (3) High-evaluation areas have shifted from east to west, exhibiting distinct agglomeration characteristics.