According to sustainable development theory, environment carrying-capacity theory, and major eco-environment issues, index systems for assessing spatiotemporal variation of the regional agriculture ecological economy were established. This was done by combining agriculture ecological environmental quality and the ecological economy, along with synthesizing the ecological environment, society and economy. We took different economic zones and cities of Jiangsu Province in China as an example. An indicator system was constituted by the level of ecological economic sub-system sustainable development (target arrangement), agricultural environment status, agricultural society status, and agricultural economic status (rule arrangement). We used 14 indicators (indicator arrangement). These included the following: agricultural ecological environmental index, regional population size (inhabitants per km²), proportion of agricultural laborers, average per capita amount of arable land, electricity consumption per gross agricultural output value, total power of agricultural machines per hm², true irrigation area, grain per capita, grain yield per hm² of arable land, per capita average GDP of agriculture, net income per villager, agriculture production value per hm² of arable land, agriculture production value proportion of village production value, fiscal support expenditure in agriculture as a proportion of financial expenditure.
In view of the complex relationship between agricultural ecosystems and environmental, social, economic and human factors, assessment models of the agriculture ecological economy were developed, and the spatiotemporal variation of regional agriculture ecological economics was analyzed on the scales of city and economic zone. The spatiotemporal variability of agricultural ecosystems was evaluated for five major economic areas of Jiangsu Province and nine representative cities, which constituted the study area. The results indicated a clear spatiotemporal variation of agro-ecological economic development, and the agro-ecological economic harmonized index of Xulian, Yanhai, Ningzhenyang, Yanjiang and Taihu economic zones showed significant spatial increases from north to south across the province, with gradual increases over the years. Temporally, the development level of the agricultural ecological economy of Xulian and Taihu economic zones increased gradually from 1999 through 2008, and these persisted in good or excellent coordinative condition. The agriculture ecological environment quality index and ecological economic development level were combined in order to assess the development tendency and ability of the agricultural ecological system, through the level of harmony between the agricultural ecological environment quality and the agricultural ecological economy. The coordination development levels of agricultural eco-environment and economy of the Xulian and Taihu economic zones were both high; these levels decreased from 1999 to 2008, but maintained good or excellent coordinative conditions. At the same time, the present work presents a series of counter measurements to achieve regional agro-ecosystem sustainable development, through analyzing the coordinated development status between agriculture ecological environment quality and ecological economy of the various economic zones. However, the analysis methods and measurements in this research continued to be based on static indicators and current state, and may have several limitations for research on the future trend of Jiangsu Province ecological environment quality, economic development, and their relationships. These limitations need to be addressed in future studies.