Spatiotemporal differentiation of arable land system resilience in the typical areas of Lower Liaohe Plain of China

Arable land system resilience can be one of the most important indicators for the state and response of arable land resources to various disturbances. It is a high demand to enhance the arable land system resilience, in order to avoid the chaos of arable land structure and even the collapse of function. Socio-ecosystem resilience refers to the social and ecological system as an interactive combination of resistivity, adaptability, and transformability. The static limitations can be broken to accurately understand the theoretical connotation of arable land system resilience. Taking Shenyang City in the Lower Liaohe Plain as the research area, this study aims to reconstruct the scientific connotation of arable land system resilience from the perspective of resistivity-adaptability-transformability in the socio-ecosystem resilience. The sequential t-test analysis of regime shifts, three-dimensional Euclidean distance, and exploratory spatial data analysis was used to explore the spatiotemporal differentiation characteristics and influencing factors of arable land system resilience in the study area from 2009 to 2018. The results show that: 1) Arable land system resilience was attributed to the joint action of resistivity, adaptability, and transformability of arable land system, in order to maintain the status quo, govern, and optimize the resilience, respectively. 2) 2013 was the mutation year of arable land productivity from 2009 to 2018. The arable land system resilience was significantly weakened in the late mutation period. The adaptability of the arable land system contributed to the main factor for the decreasing of arable land system resilience, followed by transformability, and resistivity. 3) Arable land system resilience before and after the mutation showed a spatial distribution pattern of high resilience in the middle and low resilience in the northwest of the study area. Compared with 2009-2013, the high-value area of arable land system resilience from 2013 to 2018 showed the characteristics of westward movement and northward expansion, whereas, the low-value area of resilience showed the characteristics of southward movement and eastward expansion. The arable land system resilience showed outstanding regional agglomeration. The High-High (HH) type of arable land system resilience was changed from the group and banded agglomeration in the middle and south to mass agglomeration in the west and north. There was the gradually prominent Low-Low (LL) type agglomeration in the south. 4) The arable land system resilience was affected by both human activities and natural endowment. Agricultural construction activities and natural conditions were the main reasons for the spatial differentiation of arable land system resilience in the central and southern and northwestern parts of the study area. The HH type of arable land system resilience gradually formed the scale effect under human intervention. By contrast, climate change and flood disasters were the main reasons for the southward expansion of LL type. Human activities enhanced the arable land system resilience through social governance. The modernization of agricultural management can be expected to promote a better diversity of income sources. Adaptive governance strategies can also be implemented, such as the ecological protection and restoration project of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, and lakes. The comprehensive management project can also be launched for the development of the ecological economy in the Lower Liaohe River Basin. As such, the arable land system resilience can be improved in the western and northern parts of the study area. The relationship between resistivity adaptability and transformability can provide an effective way to describe the spatial and temporal differentiation pattern of arable land system resilience. A differentiated arable land protection system can be constructed for the sustainable development of agriculture in the lower Liaohe Plain.