[Cultivated landscape pattern change due to the rice paddy expansion in Northeast China: A case study in Fujin]

On the background of global climate change, agriculture in North China has been experiencing substantial modifications to adapt to the ongoing regional warming. One of the most significant land use change is the conversation from upland cropland to paddy cropland, which is characterized by the dramatic changes of agricultural landscape pattern. In this study, we generated land use maps in Fujin City in 2000 and 2013 by using Landsat TM imagery, and analyzed the landscape pattern changes (cropland composite, special distribution, and patch characteristics, etc.) of croplands by using landscape indices and empirical approach. The results indicated a rapid cropland increase from 512400 hm2(reclamation ratio 60.4%) in 2000 to 699300 hm2(reclamation 82.4%) in 2013, especially, the paddy cropland proportion in the total cropland increased from 6.7% to more than half (54.1%) , that is, the agricultural land use mode had changed from the initial stage of paddy agriculture to the intermediate stage. The reclamation area and common agricultural area showed different paddy agriculture development characteristics: in 2000, the paddy field ratios in the common agricultural area and reclamation area were similar (5.5% and 8.3% respectively); however, in 2013, the paddy field ratio in the common agricultural area (33.6%) was significantly lower than that in reclamation area (83.4%). In 2000, the total number of cropland patches was 2311 in the study, including 1010 patches from the common agricultural area and 1301 patches from the reclamation area. The coefficient of variation (CV) , and shape index (SI) of cropland patches in upland cropland were always higher than in paddy cropland. Upland cropland had larger mean patch size with the plaque area index above 60% and higher connectivity. The patch density of upland cropland was lower than that of paddy cropland. In the conversions to the intermediate and later stages of paddy agriculture, the patch number of cropland increased rapidly with different rates in upland and paddy croplands. The CV of paddy cropland patches increased while fluctuated in upland cropland. The SI of paddy cropland increased first and then decreased, while that of upland cropland decreased continuously. The mean patch sizes of paddy and upland croplands increased and decreased respectively. The patch density increased in upland cropland while decreased in paddy cropland. The connectivity of upland cropland decreased while that of paddy cropland increased. The staggered degree of both cropland types was enhanced from 2000 to 2013. In general, the paddy agriculture was becoming the dominated agricultural land use mode in the study area while the convesions had different rates in two administrative regions (reclamation and common agricultural areas).