Two decades of cropland monitoring in Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city group: trends and future predictions

Abstract

Rapid urbanization currently poses a threat to cropland areas. Therefore, exploring the pattern of change in cropland areas and its driving mechanism is of great significance in safeguarding regional economic development and food security. In this study, data regarding cropland in the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city group (CZTCG) from 2000 to 2020 were collected, and dynamic changes in cropland in the past 20 years were analyzed. Based on this, the mechanisms that drive cropland change were explored in the context of multiple dimensions. Furthermore, an Inertial Development Scenario and a Cropland Priority Scenario were designed to simulate land use/land cover (LULC) changes in the CZTCG in 2025 and 2035, and, in particular, to analyze the characteristics of future spatiotemporal changes of cropland. The results demonstrated that the cropland area in the CZTCG in the past 20 years has shown a two-stage trend of increasing (2000–2015, increase of 8.25%) and decreasing (2015–2020, decrease of 2.91%), and the main reasons for cropland loss in the whole process of change were forest and building, with serious loss of cropland area in Changsha County and Wangcheng District. Between 2000 and 2020, socio-economic factors (GDP, total agricultural output), topography (elevation, slope), and climate change (average annual temperature, annual precipitation) were highly correlated with changes in cropland area, exhibiting significant temporal and regional variability. The simulation results indicate that until 2035, the Cropland Priority Scenario shows a significant increase in the area of cropland in the study area compared to the Inertial Development Scenario. Consequently, the implementation of a strategy that prioritizes cropland can effectively protect it, while helping to promote ecological development and regional socio-economic development.

Keywords:

• Cropland
• spatiotemporal
• driving mechanism
• prediction
• PLUS model

Acknowledgements

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.41971427); Program of Song Shan Laboratory (included in the management of the Major Science and Technology Program of Henan Province) (221100211000-5); and The High Resolution Remote Sensing, Surveying and Mapping Application Demonstration System (Phase II) (No. 42-Y30B04-9001-19/21).

Authors’ contributions

Wenbo Zhang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Song Ji, Yang Dong, Dongzi Li and Ming Li. Dazhao Fan: Data curation, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Writing-original draft. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work. We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the work submitted.