Present situation and trends in research on cultivated land intensive use in China

Abstract: The cultivated land intensive use (CLIU) is related to food security, supply of agricultural products, and even economic and social sustainable development. There is important theoretical and practical significance in deeply understanding the condition of CLIU and its change process, pattern, mechanism and comprehensive effect. The paper, by adopting the methods of literature analysis and systematic induction, analyzed the research status of CLIU in China from 3 aspects of research scale, research content and research method. Then with the help of Chinese literature database, we summarized the trends and the overall situation of the researches on CLIU in China in nearly 30 years. We think the existing research presents the following features: a diversity of research perspectives and analysis scales, a wide range of research contents and positivism methodology. Meanwhile, there are a lot of deficiencies in present research, which mainly show in 4 aspects: 1) The researches are insufficient in these aspects including the choice of proper scale, the selection of indicator to proper scale characteristics, the comparison analysis and diversion between different scales, the spatial and temporal scale coupling; 2) The subtype of the CLIU elaboration researches, including paddy field, irrigated land, dry land, is not reported; 3) The content and depth need to be developed, such as the scientificity of CLIU evaluation, the systematicness of influence mechanism, the integrity of intensive effect and the effectiveness of regulation approach; 4) The trend of favoring metric over mechanism, value results over process and verification in research methods need to be overcome, and the method system of multidisciplinary coupling has not yet been built. Overall, the existing research is difficult to meet expectations and requirements in cultivated land resource use of national strategic demand of the new urbanization, "five transformations coordination" and cultivated land protection. The result suggests that the studies on CLIU should focus on these scientific problems: 1) The influence of new development factors on CLIU should be explained, especially the influence differences between traditional elements and new development factors; 2) Revealing the feedback mechanism of the process that the CLIU affects the man-land relationship areal system; 3) Prove the collaborative process and coupling mechanism between CLIU and regional rural development, urban-rural integration and quality of regional ecological environment, build the theory and method system of "process, pattern, mechanism" of CLIU, and realize the effective control of CLIU. Based on the above main scientific problems, further studies should strengthen the project research on the scale and scaling in the evaluation of CLIU, especially the data acquisition, the identification of influencing factors and the driving mechanism analysis at multiple scales. We should be committed to building a comprehensive and integrative theoretical framework for analyzing the inside and outside process of CLIU, depicting the main body structure and spatio-temporal pattern of CLIU, and revealing the driving mechanism and regulation mechanism. More attentions should be given to the comprehensive and integrative method system for the CLIU research, as well as the scientificity and feasibility of data acquisition and processing. It is necessary to select appropriate scale and typical area to build the research system of the CLIU in China, explore the process, pattern, effect and trend of CLIU, and then put forward the typical mode and characteristic path for the intensive use of cultivated land.