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Cultivated land is crucial to food security, social and economic stability, environmental quality, and sustainable urban–rural development in China and around the world. However, most of the current grading systems for evaluating cultivated land quality in China tend to generate homogeneous results and inadequate spatial descriptions mainly due to the use of a composite index method that often fails to recognize the matching relationship between land use needs and the quality of cultivated land. The purpose of this study is to propose a new grading system for evaluating China's cultivated land quality that involves two index systems and a scoring and grading scheme. In the proposed system, cultivated land quality is redefined in terms of production capacity quality and environmental quality, and the minimum limiting factor method and the weighted linear model are coupled for factor scoring and grading. The new system is demonstrated by a case‐study in Yimen Town, a loess plateau region in western China's Shaanxi Province. The results of this study clearly indicate that the new grading system is superior to the current system when compared using two methods: the spatial pattern comparison method and the crop performance validation method. The results are also favorable in terms of matching relationships between the subclasses of cultivated land quality versus soil types and landforms. The new grading system not only helps to better understand the cultivated land quality but also provides a clear direction for science‐based remediation and amelioration of cultivated land.

Nutrition transition in China has a strong impact on dietary quality and health of Chinese consumers. This study developed the diet quality divergence Index (DQD), the divergence between real food consumption and the Chinese food pagoda 2016 (CFP), to measure the quality of diet in China. Using four waves of data (2004, 2006, 2009, and 2011) from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study shed light on the transition of diet quality for Chinese residents. Results indicate that the DQD generally decreased and Chinese diet quality improved during 2004–2011. The divergence was mainly caused by over-consumption of legumes and nuts, and under-consumption of milk and milk products. Rising income and urbanization were positively correlated with diet quality for the people with low DQD. However, both of them had negative impacts on diet quality for those with high DQD. Females and rural residents held a lower DQD than their counterparts. The results also revealed that healthy food preference, education, dining at home, household size, proportions of teens (6–17) and elders (over 64) in the families are positively correlated with Chinese diet quality. However, labor intensity, frequency of drinking alcohol, and smoking have negative impacts on diet quality. Moreover, higher DQD was found to be associated with increasing risks of overweight/obesity. Therefore, we suggest national healthy policies should pay more attention to nutrition education. It is also necessary to focus on populations with poor diet quality and to adopt measures to control drinking alcohol and smoking.

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Rapid urbanization leads to fragmentation of landscape and destruction of the ecological security network. A sound ecological security network promotes connectivity between ecological sources and mitigates the degradation of an ecological system. However, when identifying the ecological sources of the ecological network, studies available in the current literature did not simultaneously consider the structures, functions, and values of ecological patches. Our study aimed to fill this research gap, and our objective was to improve the framework for assessing the ecological security network. We demonstrated the application of the proposed framework through a case-study of the urban agglomeration around Hangzhou Bay (UAHB), a rapid urbanization region in Eastern China. We improved the identification method of ecological sources by integrating the evaluations of ecosystem services value and ecological sensitivity, while we screened ecological sources by using the rank-size rule and the natural breaks method. Based on the screened ecological sources, the ecological corridors were reconstructed and optimized for the UAHB region. The results from this study showed that ecological network has actually improved in the UAHB in the last 20 years. However, the structure and function of the ecological security network were strongly influenced by human activities and urban sprawl. The ecological security network has deteriorated locally in eastern coastal areas of UAHB during the past 20 years with strong spatial variability in ecological security patterns. To maintain an environment with well-protected ecological quality, we proposed a set of five measures to improve the sustainable development of the ecological system.