Linkage of evaluation index system for cultivated land fertility evaluation in plain and hill regions

Cultivated land is vital for food production. China has a large population and limited arable land, therefore, scientific evaluation for cultivated land quality is important for coordinating economic and social development. Because of variability of natural and economic characteristics in different areas, current evaluation on cultivated land fertility adopts different evaluation index systems, these lead to incompatibility of evaluation results and discommodity for utilization, management and protection of cultivated land. In the case of Chiping and Zhangqiu counties, we carried out cultivated land fertility evaluation in plain and hill regions, and operated the linkage of their index systems. Based on comparison of evaluation results obtained from different index systems, a linear model was established to transform index between results and it facilitated comparability of different evaluation results. In addition, in order to avoid the diversity of different index systems, a uniform evaluation index system was established so as to get the comparable evaluation results in different topographical regions, consistent with their original results.