•More intensive land use activities during 2010–2018 was observed in UAMRYR.•Ecological functions exacerbated due to the built-up land expansion.•ESV decreased from $238.86 billion in 2000 to $234.28 billion in 2018.•Ecological protection should be strengthen in high altitudes of natural vegetation. Increasing human activities have notably altered the compositions of global ecosystems, and consequently the services provided by them. As one of the most important economic functional areas in China, Urban Agglomerations in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (UAMRYR) has undergone dramatic land use changes due to the rapid urbanization over recent decades. In this study, we utilized a revised proxy-based approach to evaluate ecosystem services value (ESV), applied the ecological contribution degree to quantify the response of ESV to land use change, coupled with RDA to explore the socioeconomic forces of ecosystem services. Our findings showed that land use activities were more intensive during 2010–2018 than that in 2000–2010. The total ESV decreased by $4.58 billion and most of the ecological functions exacerbated due to the expansion of built-up land and the reduction of cultivated land during 2010–2018. Besides, based on RDA result, park green land per capita, population density, and distance from the central city were estimated as the top three frontal factors affecting ESV; yet per capita water consumption was a negative one. Therefore, different development strategies should be adopted along the altitude gradient in UAMRYR. That is to emphasize the protection of permanent cultivated land and the diversification of land composition in low altitude areas, while ecological protection should be strengthened in higher areas. Understanding how ecosystem services respond to LUCC and socioeconomic drivers can help to enhance ecosystem functions and provide a theoretical basis for the construction of ecological civilization of UAMRYR, which may also be applied at the other urban agglomerations around the globe.