Analysis of Farmland Abandonment at Parcel Level: A Case Study in the Mountainous Area of China

In recent years, with the unceasing acceleration of China's urbanization and rapid development of the country's economy, cropland abandonment has become an ongoing issue, especially in mountainous areas. Mapping abandoned cropland using remote sensing technology is still challenging due to the difficulties in distinguishing abandoned cropland from fallowed land. In addition, there are few credible approaches to map timing and recultivation of abandoned cropland. In this context, this research developed an annual land-use trajectory approach to map different types of abandoned cropland based on freely available Landsat and HJ-1 satellite images with a spatial resolution of 30 m. Based on this method, five types of cropland change, including one type of fallowed land and two types of abandoned land, were identified in a mountainous town of China (Zhongduo). In addition, the timing and recultivation of abandoned cropland were assessed. The accuracy of the abandonment map was assessed as high as 86.67%. It was found that the percentages of spontaneous abandoned, induced abandoned, fallowed, stable, and lost cropland in Zhongduo were 23.16%, 8.40%, 13.69%, 27.84%, and 26.91% from 2012 to 2017, respectively. The average time for spontaneously abandoned cropland was 3.45 years. Furthermore, 50.54% of the spontaneously abandoned cropland and 12.91% of induced abandoned cropland were recultivated due to fluctuating prices of agricultural products and materials, and the implemented land transfer policy.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping Cropland Abandonment in Mountainous Areas Using an Annual Land-Use Trajectory Approach

Song

2019

“…In sum, seasonal farmland abandonment is a complex, multi-dimensional process where socioeconomic and environmental forces and the spatial interaction of farm abandonment are interlinked. The influence of farming facilities, macro location, and spatial dependence on farm abandonment has not been discovered by previous studies on Chinese farm abandonment at the parcel and household levels; thus, this study updates and enriches our knowledge [24,27].…”

Section: Conclusion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 50%

“…With cultivated land abandonment in China, scholars have studied the pattern and driving factors from the micro-level of peasant households, parcels, and villages, mainly with the aim to understand perennial abandonment [8,24,25,27,42]. However, our understanding of seasonal abandonment is still insufficient.…”

Section: Conclusion and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the determinants of China's arable land abandonment have already been investigated by some scholars, almost all of these case studies concerned perennial abandonment and focused on the micro level (including households, villages, and land parcels) [8,24,25,27,42]. In addition, recent studies often focused on abandonment in mountainous areas, but little attention has been paid to the plains of China.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploring the Factors Driving Seasonal Farmland Abandonment: A Case Study at the Regional Level in Hunan Province, Central China

Liu

Zhang

et al. 2017

Farmland abandonment, including perennial and seasonal abandonment, is an important process of land use change that matters most to food security. Although there is a great deal of studies on farmland abandonment, seasonal abandonment, which is as serious as perennial abandonment, has attracted little academic attention. This paper takes Hunan Province in central China as its study area and uses a spatial regression model to examine the driving factors of seasonal farmland abandonment at the county level. Our results show that farmland abandonment has striking spatial relativity, and there are two clustering zones with a high index of farmland abandonment (IFA) in the Dongting plain and the basin in south-central Hunan, while a clustering zone of low IFA can be found in the mountains of southwest Hunan. Farmland abandonment at the regional level is negatively affected by the land productive potentialities, proportion of mechanized planting, ratio of effective irrigation, and distance to provincial capital, while it is positively associated with the variables mountainous terrain, per capita farmland area, and labor shortage. Additionally, farmland abandonment is also affected by adjacent areas through its spatial dependence. In short, seasonal farmland abandonment is also driven integratedly by the socioeconomic and environmental dimensions and spatial interaction of farm abandonment.

“…The amount of per capita farmland has become an important referencing index, directly reflecting the overall pattern of the "man-land relationship" at local and smallholder scale, and is also an important influencing factor of the spatial resilience of the GPS [1,2]. Under the background of rural-urban migration, the transition of the recessive morphology of farmland use (including the circulation proportion, the non-agricultural proportion, the non-grain proportion) has gradually been highlighted [104]. In addition, the relationships between farmland transition and other land use patterns (such as the relationship between forest transition and farmland transition) are key factors for the transformation of the system (Figure 7).…”

Section: Key Thresholds Of Spatial Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis Framework of China’s Grain Production System: A Spatial Resilience Perspective

Long

et al. 2017

China's grain production has transformed from absolute shortage to a current structural oversupply. High-intensity production introduced further challenges for the eco-environment, smallholder livelihood, and the man-land interrelationship. Driven by urban-rural transformation, research on food security patterns and grain production has expanded into a new field. To analyze the challenges and required countermeasures for China's grain production system (GPS), this study constructed a theoretical GPS framework based on space resilience. Firstly, a new GPS concept was proposed and a functional system was established for protecting the regional food security, thus guaranteeing smallholder livelihood, stabilizing urban-rural transformation, and sustaining the eco-environment in terms of economic, social, and ecological attributes of the GPS. Secondly, based on a cross-scale interaction analysis that varied from a smallholder scale to a global scale, the systematic crisis of the GPS was analyzed. Thirdly, a cross-scale analytic framework of the GPS was formed from the perspective of spatial resilience, integrating both inner and external disturbance factors of the GPS. Both spatial heterogeneity and connectivity of internal and external disturbance factors are important contents of system space resilience. Finally, the hierarchy of spatial resilience of GPS became clear. The transformation of labor force and the land use transition form key thresholds of the GPS. In summary: based on protecting the basic functions of the GPS, the cross-scale effect of systematic disturbance factors and relevant countermeasures for spatial resilience are effectively influenced by the coordination of the interests of multiple stakeholders; spatial resilience is an effective analytical tool for GPS regulation, providing a reference for revealing the inherent mechanism and functional evolution of the GPS in the process of urban-rural transformation.