Land resource competition and land-use change in Shunyi district, Beijing

Varied demands of society to the limited land resources are leading to land use competition, which is benefit competition in essence, so landuse trpies are changed. Followed by the definition of stakeholders and land usecompetition, the paper identified main stakeholders of land use and analyzed their competitions for the limited land resource in Shunyi District, Beijing. The study revealed that the great gap of benefit among different land uses was the key driving factor of land use conversion in Shunyi District, such as the conversion of arable land to built-up land that caused a great loss of farmland in thelast decade. It was found that paddy field area decreased rapidly in the region,much faster than that ofdry farmland, mainly due toincreasing shortage of water and decreasing profit. With a continuous decrease in profit, grain crops werelargely replaced by vegetables and orchard, resulting in a great decrease ofthesowing area of grain crops while a great expansion of cash crops in the last decade.