Spatiotemporal dynamics and driving forces of cultivated land in China

It is important to study the temporal and spatial change characteristics and the decreasing trend in cultivated land in China in the past decades, analyze the core influencing factors of the cultivated land decrease, and understand the regularity and trend in the cultivated land change. This study has important guiding significance for ensuring food security in China and optimizing and adjusting the pattern of land spatial development and utilization. Based on the data of China's urban cultivated land change from 1990 to 2022, this study analyzes the pattern of cultivated land protection and destruction in China from the perspective of the total cultivated land change, the increase and decrease evolution characteristics, and future trends and determines the main driving factors of cultivated land destruction in the process of urbanization. The results show the following: (1) The goal of the dynamic balance policy of cultivated land in China from 1990 to 2022 has been basically achieved, but regional differences still exist, which show a spatial pattern of planar contraction and belt growth. There is a new feature of a "southwest, northwest, and northeast" increase, while there is a "central" decrease. (2) Cultivated land has gradually shown a trend of growth rather than contraction, the cultivated land contraction shows a trend of crossing the "Hu-Huanyong Line" and moving westward, and the center of gravity of the cultivated land contraction has shifted to the periphery of the Chengdu-Chongqing area. The cultivated land growth shows a trend of moving southeast across the "Hu-Huanyong Line", and developed provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang have gradually become the new centers of cultivated land growth. This coincides with the strict implementation of basic cultivated land protection policies in developed areas of China in recent years. (3) Factors such as the urban population size, economic level, agricultural scale, industrial structure, and other types of land scale have different degrees of impact on the destruction and restoration of cultivated land.