How to improve the utilization efficiency of natural resources and control environmental impacts is one of the key steps to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A multi-dimensional approach integrating landscape and systematic analysis might be a good way to address this issue. In this study, three main ecosystems and six vegetation cover changes on the Loess Plateau (LP) from 2000 to 2015 were selected to clarify their impacts on resource utilization and conservation in three environmental regions based on landscape-level remote sensing data and an emergy-based thermodynamic system processing model. The evapotranspiration empower was regarded as the system emergy utilization, with the structure and function of the ecosystem being divided into resource utilization efficiency and environmental impacts. Results showed that (1) Forest could reinforce production by improving the water and soil conservation in water erosion region, although it had a lower water utilization efficiency than other ecosystems. (2) Grassland was more suitable than forest in the water-limited wind and wind-water erosion regions, with a higher water utilization efficiency and higher resource conservation. These results suggested that maximum resource acquisition is not always the optimal strategy for the development of ecosystems, especially in a resource-limited environment. The maximum empower principle could be a general principle to drive ecosystem development at a regional scale. Expanding cultivated land in the wind-water erosion region might be a choice for the sustainable increase of grain production in the LP. By incorporating the main characteristics of the major issues concerned in the studied area into the ecosystem processes and landscape integration model, the new multi-dimensional method has a good application potential in guiding land use planning and decision making in ecological fragile areas, like but not limited to the LP.

如何提高自然资源的利用效率和控制环境影响，是实现联合国可持续发展目标的关键步骤之一。整合景观和系统分析的多维方法可能是解决此问题的好方法。在这项研究中，我们选择了2000年至2015年黄土高原（LP）的三个主要生态系统和六个植被覆盖变化，以根据景观水平的遥感数据和能效分析，阐明它们对三个环境区域的资源利用和保护的影响。基于热力学系统的处理模型。蒸散能力被认为是系统能值的利用，生态系统的结构和功能分为资源利用效率和环境影响。结果表明：（1）森林的水分利用效率比其他生态系统低，但可以通过改善水蚀地区的水土保持来加强生产。（2）在水禁风和风蚀水蚀地区，草地比森林更适宜，水资源利用效率更高，资源节约更高。这些结果表明，最大程度地获取资源并非总是生态系统发展的最佳策略，尤其是在资源有限的环境中。最大授权原则可以是在区域范围内推动生态系统发展的一般原则。在风水侵蚀区扩大耕地可能是LP粮食产量可持续增长的一种选择。