Soil quality is related to food security and human survival and development. Due to the acceleration of urbanization and the increase in abandoned land, the quality of topsoil has deteriorated, thus resulting in land degradation in recent years. In this study, a minimum data set (MDS) was constructed through principal component analysis (PCA) to determine the indicator data set for evaluating topsoil quality in Tieling County, northeast China. In addition, the soil quality index (SQI) was calculated to analyze the spatial distribution characteristics of the topsoil quality and the influencing factors. The results showed that the MDS included total potassium (TK), clay, zinc (Zn), soil organic matter (SOM), soil water content (SWC), cation exchange capacity (CEC), pH, and copper (Cu), which could replace all other indicators for assessing the topsoil quality in the research region. The overall soil quality of Tieling County showed a trend of being low in the east and high in the west, and it gradually increased from the hilly area to the plain area. The topsoil quality of Tieling County is divided into one to five levels, with grade-I being the best and grade-V being the worst. The proportion of Grade-II and grade-III is the largest, which is 28.5% and 26.3%, respectively, and grade-V is the smallest, which is 9.6%. The evaluation results are consistent with field research, which can provide a reference for other topsoil quality evaluations, and it also provides a basis for the formulation of soil quality improvement measures.
Available potassium (AVK) in the soil of cropland is one of the most important factors determining soil quality and agricultural productivity. Thus, it is crucial to understand the variation of AVK and its influencing factors for sustaining soil fertility and mitigating land degradation. Farm households are the ultimate land users, and their land-use behaviors inevitably play an important role in the variation of AVK. This paper, therefore, aims to explore the effects of households’ land-use behaviors on soil AVK from spatial and temporal perspectives. Taking an urban peripheral region in Northeast China as the study area, we firstly use geostatistics (Kriging interpolation) and GIS tools to map out the spatial AVK distributions in 1980, 2000, and 2010, based on soil sampling data points, and then assess the impacts of land-use behaviors on AVK using econometric models. The results show that, although the AVK content in the study area has a largely downward trend over the 30 years, there are distinct trends in different stages. The disparity of trends can be attributed to the changes in households’ land-use behaviors over time. The spatial variation of AVK is also substantial and intriguing: the closer to the urban area, the greater the decline of soil AVK content, while the farther away from the urban area, the greater the rise of soil AVK content. This spatial disparity can too be largely explained by the obvious differences in households’ land-use behaviors in various regions.
China’s urbanization has maintained a high growth rate for a long period of time, but the contradiction between urban and rural land use has become increasingly prominent. Link policy, promulgated in 2005 by the Chinese Central Government, made a positive attempt to promote the sustainable use of urban and rural land, which has attracted much attention. This article focuses on the implementation effects of this policy from the micro-perspective of farmers’ satisfaction and its underlying influence factors using a structural equation model (SEM) based on a cross-sectional dataset of 280 households surveyed in Chongqing city, China. The results show that the farmers’ satisfaction under the Link Policy is high, and most of the respondents are satisfied with the Link Policy at present. Furthermore, the farmers’ satisfaction is affected by their expectations, perceived value, and perceived quality. Among these factors, perceived quality has the strongest positive impact on farmers’ satisfaction, for which compensation equity under the Link Policy is most important to farmers. However, farmers’ expectations and perceived value have a negative impact on farmers’ satisfaction, which indicates that the higher the farmers’ expectations and perceived value, the lower their satisfaction. In addition, there is a strong positive correlation between farmer satisfaction and farmer trust, which means that the higher the level of farmer satisfaction, the more support the farmers will give to the government. These main results have heuristic implications for policymakers to improve the Link Policy, thereby enhancing the farmers’ satisfaction and thus achieving the goal of sustainable use between rural and urban land.
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