Impact of cropland displacement on the potential crop production in China: a multi-scale analysis

Changes in the amount and location of cropland areas may affect the potential crop production at different spatial scales. However, most studies ignore the impacts of cropland displacement on potential crop production. In many countries, cropland protection policies mainly aim for no loss in croplan...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Regional environmental change 2020-09, Vol.20 (3), Article 97
Main Authors: Yang, Bohan, Ke, Xinli, van Vliet, Jasper, Yu, Qiangyi, Zhou, Ting, Verburg, Peter H.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Analysis
Climate Change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Crop production
Crops
Cultivated lands
Displacement
Earth and Environmental Science
Environment
Geographical locations
Geography
Harvesting
Multiscale analysis
Nature Conservation
Oceanography
Original Article
Policies
Regional/Spatial Science
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Changes in the amount and location of cropland areas may affect the potential crop production at different spatial scales. However, most studies ignore the impacts of cropland displacement on potential crop production. In many countries, cropland protection policies mainly aim for no loss in cropland area, while there is no restriction on change of cropland location. Taking China as the study area, we analyze the impacts of cropland displacement on potential crop production at four administrative levels during the period 2000 and 2018. At the national level, we find a net decrease in cropland area of 0.81 Mha, while another 19.63 Mha was displaced. The former led to a decrease of 4.20 Mton in potential crop production, while the latter resulted in a decrease of 43.26 Mton as a result of lower quality of the newly cultivated lands. In other words, cropland displacement explains 91% of the total loss in potential crop production at the national scale. However, the contribution of cropland displacement to total change in potential crop production is increasingly smaller at provincial level, municipal level, and county levels. These findings highlight the importance of geographic location on crop production and suggest that cropland policies should consider geographic location in addition to cropland area.
ISSN:1436-3798
1436-378X
DOI:10.1007/s10113-020-01690-x