Spatial- temporal change and analysis of land consolidation's newly increased cultivated land in China

Abstract: Land consolidation is of significance in the construction of ecological civilization put forward by Chinese Government and to be carried out in the future development. So studying spatial-temporal change and future development of land consolidation's newly increased cultivated land is important to investigate the role of land consolidation in ecological construction of China. This paper analyzed spatial-temporal changes of newly increased cultivated land from land arrangement, land exploitation, and land reclamation from 2001 to 2011, using the method of weighted gravity center model, which displayed moved direction and moved distance of land consolidation's newly increased cultivated land. The results showed that the newly increased cultivated land of land consolidation was 3.2×106 hm2 from 2001 to 2011. The majority of newly increased cultivated land, accounting for 63.2% was derived from land exploitation. The newly increased cultivated land area from land arrangement and land reclamation accounted for 21.8% and 15.0% of the total newly increased cultivated land, respectively. The zone analysis of newly increased cultivated land of land consolidation was conducted based on the classification of China into 4 regions of East zone, West zone, Middle zone and North-east zone. The newly increased cultivated land from land arrangement was mainly distributed in East zone with 53.8% of the total from 2001 to 2008. East zone and west zone were the main distribution zones of newly increased cultivated land from land exploitation. They were 37.9% and 33.0% of the total from 2001 to 2008. Land discarded by factories and damaged mines, which was the object of land reclamation, had uncertainty in distribution and happening, so the proportion of newly increased cultivated land from land reclamation changed significantly among inter-zones and inter-annuals. The weighted gravity center of newly increased cultivated land area from land arrangement moved to west from 2001 to 2011. Comparing with 2001-2006 and 2007-2009, the moved average distance of 2010-2011 to the west were 769.59 and 603.44 km, respectively. The weighted gravity centers of newly increased cultivated land area from land exploitation during 2001 to 2006 were located in north and west of our country's geographic gravity center, with the tendency of moving to north from west, and it showed a trend of moving to west from east from 2007 to 2011. There were uncertainties in the moved direction of weighted gravity center of newly increased cultivated land area from land reclamation from 2001 to 2011. Based on the analysis above, we reckon that, at the background of ecological construction and relatively stable cultivated land quantity in China, the proportion of newly increased cultivated land from land exploitation should be decreased by the means of reducing land exploitation projects in land consolidation plan, and the related actions, for example, the reasonable layouts of land exploitation projects should be considered to prevent that weighted gravity center of newly increased cultivated land from land exploitation moves to west of China; the improvement of land quality and construction of fertilized farmland should be strengthened through land arrangement, which will be the main direction of land consolidation; and, land reclamation should play a more important role in repairing the damaged ecological environment with increasing cultivated land area.