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Water-related cultural heritage architecture (WRCHA) represents a globally significant and potentially hybrid heritage found across river basins worldwide. Its spatial and temporal evolution characteristics offer insight into the development trends of river basin environments, yet their value within water-related cultural and environmental systems remain incompletely assessed. This study undertakes qualitative and quantitative analyses of the historical spatial and temporal distributions, influencing factors, and environmental changes affecting the water-related culture, climate, population, and urban areas of 295 WRCHA sites in the Li River Basin of China, employing drought–flood indices, GIS analyses, random forest algorithms, and other methodologies. The results reveal that (1) the Lishui Basin contains a significant distribution pattern of agglomeration for WRCHA within the river basin, concentrated along the river, at low altitudes, with minimal terrain variation, and radiating around ancient governance centers, with varying increases observed across different periods and aggregation zones and with significant spatial and temporal heterogeneities; (2) the distribution pattern is influenced by joint natural and human factors, closely tied to variables such as the river network density, DEM, population changes, and distance to ancient government sites; (3) the combination of the architecture's location and elevation, along with drought–flood curves, reflects the position of the ancient riverbed of the Lishui River and its historical maximum water level. The quantity of new constructions, in conjunction with the distance from ancient government centers and the trends in population change, thus indicates the urban scale and the frequency and severity of disasters. This study provides a research paradigm and historical reference model for investigating environmental changes in watershed systems, aiding in clarifying the historical human–water symbiosis pattern in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Such insights will furnish a scientific basis for future regional ecological planning and watershed environmental management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Multi-proxy documented Holocene environmental evolution of Wenzhou Coastal Plain. • Holocene transgression maximum occurred during 8400–7400 cal a BP. • Seawater inundation in the lowlands of the plain limited neolithic human activity. The Quaternary transgression had a significant impact on environmental changes and ancient human activities in eastern China. However, due to the lack of reliable core records, the history of the transgression and its impact on human activities along the eastern coast of Zhejiang Province remains unclear. Here, multi-proxy indicators including lithology, AMS14C dating, grain size, total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), elemental geochemistry, and microfossils in a new core (QTZ1) from the Wenzhou Coastal Plain (WCP) are employed to reconstruct sedimentary evolution, which experienced four phases as follows: (1) The terrestrial environment dominated by delta facies (before 11,700 cal a BP); (2) The marine-terrestrial transitional environment dominated by littoral facies (11,700–9,400 cal a BP); (3) The marine environment dominated by shallow marine facies (9,400–6,200 cal a BP), including the Holocene transgression maximum occurred during 8,400–7,400 cal a BP; (4) The marine-terrestrial transitional environment marked by littoral facies (after 6,200 cal a BP). A comparative analysis on the Holocene transgression intensity, as reconstructed by Sr/Ba in the WCP, and archaeological sites in the Ningshao Plain indicates that the ancestors gradually migrated to the eastern low-elevation plains and developed Neolithic rice cultivation after the transgression maximum. Our results sheds light on the correlation between the Holocene transgression, sedimentary evolution, and ancient human activities in Zhejiang Coastal Plain, providing valuable insights into Quaternary environmental changes and human adaptations in the eastern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]