Comparisons of land consolidation projects in the hilly and mountainous, southwestern China

Newly-increased cultivated land potential is an important foundation of decision-making for land consolidation projects, and is reflected by newly-increased cultivated land ratio. Based on 10% and 3% of newly-increased cultivated land ratio from criterion of the Ministry of Land and Resources, two schemes whose newly-increased cultivated land ratio were 10.3% and 4.02% in Bashan land consolidation project were designed; meanwhile, dynamic investment evaluation method, extension element model and comprehensive index method were used to comparatively analyze their integrative benefits separately. The results indicate that newly-increased cultivated land area is greatly dependent on terracing slope fields in dryland and there are no significant difference among irrigation and drainage engineering, road engineering and shelter-belt engineering except their layout intensity. Scheme, that newly-increased cultivated land ratio is 10.3%, is much better in payback period for dynamic investment, annual net benefits, eco-environment correlation value, social benefit index and systemic benefit index than another one which cultivated land ratio is 4.02%. Choosing representative farmlands and using weighted algorithm are effective methods to calculate net cultivated land coefficient, thus providing scientific foundation for studying newly-increased cultivated land in hilly and mountainous, southwestern China. And using analogism and field survey, the subjectivity of choosing representative farmlands could be avoided.