Dynamic transfer and driving mechanisms of the coupling and coordination of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency in China

The joint study of agriculture and rural areas is of great significance for safeguarding agricultural development,revitalizing rural areas,and enhancing farmers'well-being.This paper aims to assess the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the coupling and coordination degree of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency and their dynamic transfer law and driving mechanisms,based on panel data of 31 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)in China from 2010 to 2020.The results showed:(1)Good coupling and coordination of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency,with reduced temporal differentiation degrees between regions;(2)Significant spatial autocorrelation between the overall coupling and coordination degrees of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency,forming cold spot and hot spot spatial patterns in the western and eastern parts,respectively,with a central transition area;(3)A spillover effect of the dynamic transfer process,with a manifested specific law as"club convergence","Matthew effect",and progressive development characteristics;(4)The key roles of the natural,social,economic,and policy indicators in the coupling and coordination development process of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency.However,the selected indicators showed substantial spatial differences in their influences on the coupling and coordination process between provinces.

Land use planning, sustainable food production and rural development: A literature analysis

In many countries agricultural land is a scarce resource, either due to natural conditions or because of competition over land. An increased need for food globally, changing environmental conditions and increased demand for environmentally sound agriculture and food systems, all require better integration of planning for rural land use and food production. A literature analysis was conducted including coding of 76 papers, to answer the question on how and to what extent, literature addresses the integration of land use policy and planning, and food system planning, in the context of sustainable rural development and agri-food production. The results indicate that land use and food system planning co-occur in literature, yet lacking the perspective of sustainable rural development, suggesting that integrated planning for sustainable rural land use and food systems needs to be strengthened. Food system research has largely focused on availability and access, or what can be associated with consumers, rather than rural land use. Likewise, the inclusion of food systems is neither common in rural land use planning nor in agricultural policies. Holistic planning for a sustainable food system may be suffering from a disjointed approach, e.g., planning for farmland may not have any links to planning for accessibility, consumer preferences or food marketing. Increased cooperation between stakeholders is necessary to break down the silos in the food system. Policies and plans for rural land use and agri-food production should be coordinated for the common goal of sustainability.

Evaluating rural sustainable land use from a system perspective based on the ecosystem service value

Rural sustainable land use(RSLU) is important to China’s implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals and the goals of rural revitalization strategy in China. Research on RSLU is key to understanding the impact of human activities on rural sustainability. This paper explored the evaluation method of RSLU from a system perspective based on the ecosystem service value(ESV). Three systems were proposed for consideration when conducting this evaluation method. One was the sustainability of the land system, the other was the sustainability of the ecoeconomic system, and the rest was the sustainability of the land-eco-economy system. Indicators including(1) land use intensity and land system stability,(2) gross domestic production(GDP), ESV, and the eco-economic harmony degree(EEHD), and(3) coupling degree and coupling coordination degree were used to analyze the sustainability of the land, eco-economic, and landeco-economic systems, respectively. An empirical research on Yanhe ecovillage was conducted and the study period extended from 2008 to 2020. The results showed that forest land had always accounted for more than 81.20% of the total area in Yanhe eco-village from 2008 to 2020, which greatly influenced land system stability and restricted economic development. This feature contrasted with RSLU. The total ESV of Yanhe eco-village declined by 1.60×106CNY during 2008–2020 because of land use changes. The EEHD was –0.01, which presented that there was a very slight unharmonious between ecology and economy. The coupling degree and coupling coordination degree showed that the development between the land and ecoeconomic systems exhibited a coupling coordination relationship. The results indicated that ecology and economy in Yanhe eco-village will change significantly in response to land use changes in rural areas, which further revealed the dynamic linkage between human beings and nature. Moreover, opposite variation tendencies in land system stability and ESV revealed that the contradiction between the high stability of the land system and well development of the eco-economic system. The results of this study implied that it is necessary and useful to integrate ESV into land management to achieve RSLU.

Rural land use spatial allocation in the semiarid loess hilly area in China:Using a Particle Swarm Optimization model equipped with multi-objective optimization techniques

Semiarid loess hilly areas in China are enduring a series of environmental conflicts between urban expansion,cultivated land conservation,soil erosion and water shortage,and require land use allocation to reconcile these environmental conflicts.We argue that the optimized spatial allocation of rural land use can be achieved by a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) model in conjunction with multi-objective optimization techniques.Our study focuses on Yuzhong County of Gangsu Province in China,a typical catchment on the Loess Plateau,and proposes a land use spatial optimization model.The model maximizes land use suitability and spatial compactness based on a variety of constraints,e.g.optimal land use structure and restrictive areas,and employs an improved PSO algorithm equipped with a determinant initialization method and a dynamic weighted aggregation (DWA) method to obtain the optimized land use spatial pattern.The results suggest that (1) approximately 4% of land use should be reallocated and these changes would alleviate the environmental conflicts in the study area;(2) the major reshuffling is slope farmland and newly added construction and cultivated land,whereas the unchanged areas are largely forests and basic farmland;and (3) the PSO is capable of optimizing rural land use allocation,and the determinant initialization method and DWA can improve the performance of the PSO.

Mutual Conversion of Land Use between Urban and Rural Area in the Process of Urbanization: A Case Study of Shandong Province

Urbanization is one of the driving forces for the land use change in type and structure, and its prominent effect is to convert rural land to urban land. This paper takes Shan-dong Province as an example to analyze the current situation of the mutual conversion between the urban and rural areas from the aspects of the structure of land use, the decreasing tendency of the cultivated land, the changes of land use in urban and rural residential areas. It points out that cultivated land is converted to residential area land, industrial and/or mining area land. The relationship between the urban area land and the cultivated land is more direct; meanwhile, the changes of rural residential area lag behind obviously. The decrease of the cultivated land and the decline of soil quality will be the two difficult problems in the process of urbanization.

A Multi-agent Model to Simulate Regional Land Use Change with an Application to the Poyang Lake Area of China

In many regions both urban expansion and rural development take place simultaneously, and for the purpose of understanding the dynamic process of land use/cover change （LUCC） in such large areas, this study develops a multi-agent based land use model. Taking the Poyang Lake area of China as a typical case, this study applies the mechanism of diffusion-limited aggregation to simulate the behavior of urban agents, while rural land use is illustrated with a bottom-up based model consisting of agent and environment layers. In the agent layer, each household agent makes its own decisions on land use, and at each time interval a government agent takes control of land use by implementing policies. According to incomes and the rate of migrant workers, household agents are divided into six categories, among which different decision rules are followed. For complex LUCC in the Poyang Lake area of China from 1985 to 2005, the artificial society model developed in this study yields results highly consistent with observations. Importantly, it is shown that governmental policies can impose significant effects on the decisions of individual household agents on land use and the multi-agent-based land use model developed in this study provides a robust means for assessing the effectiveness of governmental policies.

The process and driving forces of rural hollowing in China under rapid urbanization

Rural hollowing is a recent geographic phenomenon that has received significant attention in China, which is experiencing rapid urbanization. It has led to the wasteful use of rural land resources, and imposed obstacles on the optimization of land use and coordinated urban-rural development. Rural hollowing has various forms of manifestation, which refers to the neglect and vacancy of rural dwellings, both of which can lead to damage and ultimate abandonment of rural dwellings. Damaged dwellings have different degrees of destruction, ranging from slight, moderate to severe. The evolutive process of rural hollowing in general has five stages, i.e., emergence, growth, flourishing, stability, and decline. Based on the combination of both regional economic development level and its physiographic features, the types of rural hollowing can be categorised as urban fringe, plain agricultural region, hilly agricultural region, and agro-pastoral region. Especially, the plain agricultural region is the most typical one in rural hollowing, which shows the spatial evolution of rural hollowing as a ＂poached egg＂ pattern with a layered hollow core and solid shape. Furthermore, the driving forces behind rural hollowing are identified as the pull of cities and push of rural areas. In particular, this paper identifies contributors to rural hollowing that include rural depopulation in relation to rapid urbanisation and economic change, land ownership and land use policy, and institutional barriers.