## 5 Conclusions  
Based on the results of the study, the following conclusions are made:  
1. The level of each type of ESV does not depend entirely on the size of the area but is determined by the ecosystem service functions it can provide and the level of ESV per unit area. Water bodies and wetland ecosystems provide the highest land-averaged ESVs of all ecosystem types and mainly provide provisioning and regulating services, further confirming the ecological importance of water bodies for hydrological regulation and climate regulation [46; 47; 48];
2. The relationship between land use types on both sides of the Guangdong section of the Xijiang River Basin shows a trend from water ecosystems to terrestrial ecosystems, and the ESV decreases gradually with the increase in distance from the water. The trend in the ecosystem service value of the Xijiang River's interface zone varying with the distance from the water bodies corroborates, to some extent, the superiority of the interface zone over the land in terms of ecological functions and values. It indicates that ecological protection measures within 1 km of the river should be increased at the water bodies scale, attention should be paid to the protection of forest land within 6-10 km, and artificial wetlands should be gradually replaced by natural wetlands to enhance the value of water bodies ecosystem services [49; 50];
3. In relation to the Guangdong section of the Xijiang River Basin, the land-averaged ESV shows an overall undulating trend and decreases with decreasing distance from downstream areas. On the upstream and downstream gradient, because of the geographic environmental differences and urbanization development, the land use system at the upstream and downstream gradient in different regions changed subsequently, and the ecosystem structure gradually tended to develop into diversified forms, with broad-leaved forests as the main form. The land-averaged ESV showed a fluctuating and decreasing trend, and the landscape pattern showed an intensification of fragmentation, an increase in richness, and a trend of landscape diversification. Once again, this proves that different land use types and landscape spatial configurations will lead to landscape spatial heterogeneity, which, through landscape function conduction, will, to a certain extent, trigger spatial differences in EVs, ultimately leading to spatial differences in EVs, which shows that the higher the degree of landscape fragmentation and the higher the dispersion of landscape types, the lower the law of an ESV [51]. * By constructing a geographically weighted regression model to analyze the spatial differentiation characteristics and intrinsic causes of the impacts of natural systems and socio-economic factors on the value of land ecological services (ESV), it is known that the dominant drivers of ecosystem services in the waterway intersection zone of the Guangdong section of the Xijiang River maintern are the total amount of electric power consumption, industrial exhaust gas emissions, and industrial wastewater emissions, which suggests that the socio-economic factors have a greater impact on the ESV in the economically developed areas. These factors are generated by human living and production activities, which indirectly affect the size of ESV by influencing factors such as temperature and gas. In the context of global warming, natural factors, such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall, in the basin and socio-economic factors, such as the share of industries in each county and city, affect the spatial distribution characteristics of ESV in the region, while topographic and geomorphological factors, such as slope and vegetation cover, and socio-economic factors, such as energy consumption, electricity, and the emission of industrial waste gases and wastewater, are the determinants of changes in the generation of the ESV.