In recent years, China has issued several basin-scale plans to deal with pressing resources, environmental, and social problems caused by regional urbanisation. These plans help push ahead flood control and disaster reduction, the allocation, utilisation, and conservation of water resources, water ecological environment protection, and integrated basin management. The development of Yangtze River Delta, the Yangtze Economic Belt, the Yellow River Basin, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei Region, Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao Greater Bay Area, etc., has now become new national agendas, which are guaranteed by top-down policies and offer opportunities for regional growth. Several new laws and regulations coming into effect as of 2021 also reinforce the collaborative basin management that drives regional social and economic development.

Meanwhile, territorial spatial planning systems established under the requirement of Multiple-Plan Integration also underscore basin development strategies in spatial management and ecological restoration. This issue, mainly focusing on the regional planning research based on water and land resources through revealing their ecological characteristics, is expected to include contribution to the following aspects (but is not limited to):

1) Research on regional ecology, land use, and ecosystem service at the basin scale
2) Research on theories, approaches, and practices relevant to basin spatial planning and ecological restoration
3) Research on spatial strategies and economic zoning to propel basin-scale social and economic development
4) Research on basin-scale collaborative planning and sustainable development of water resources and environmental protection
5) Integrated basin management planning geared to guaranteeing basins’ ecosystem services
6) ecological river-corridor conservation and restoration at the basin scale

In all these topics, researchers and planners are called to act as leaders in interdisciplinary collaboration within the fields of biology, geography, geology, and the climate sciences to solve ecological and environmental problems by treating the water network of a basin, as a whole. In this issue, LA Frontiers also attempts to learn from cutting-edge exemplars worldwide in basin management, especially in ecosystem conservation and restoration, to provide reference for Chinese researchers and practitioners.