Human impacts on risk of antibiotics in soil differentially depend on land system across scales

Abstract Antibiotics have been widely used to protect human health and improve food production, however, they persist in soil and undermine ecosystem sustainability. The human impacts on soil susceptibility to antibiotic pollution on various spatial scales are poorly understood. Here, we predicted the geographic characteristics of antibiotic pollution risk and explored the corresponding human impacts on multiple spatial scales in China, a representative of high level of human activity. Given that human activities increase antibiotic pollution risk, land systems play a more fundamental role in risk increase than do population and economic growth. With decreasing spatial scale, land use composition had pronounced contributions to antibiotic pollution risk instead of land management strategy (55.9 ± 13.4% vs . 7.0 ± 1.7%). Furthermore, we identified the regions of concern, and thresholds of the effects of land system intensification on risk increase based on their non-linear changes. The scale-dependent relationships elucidate the sustainability of human–environment systems across spatial scales, which is beneficial to the establishment of strategies and action plans worldwide.