Spatiotemporal Pattern of Cultivated Land Pressure and Its Influen-cing Factors in the Huaihai Economic Zone, China

• Published in: 中国地理科学（英文版） 2023, Vol.33 (2), p.287-303
• Main Authors: LI Yi, FANG Bin, LI Yurui, FENG Weilun, YIN Xu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1002-0063

Cultivated land pressure represents a direct reflection of grain security. Existing relevant studies rarely approached the spati-otemporal pattern of cultivated land pressure or the spatial heterogeneity of its influencing factors from the level of economic zones. Taking the Huaihai Economic Zone (HEZ), China for case analysis, this study investigated the spatiotemporal pattern of cultivated land pressure in diverse periods from 2000 to 2018 based on a modified cultivated land pressure index and spatial correlation models. On this basis, it explored the influencing factors of the spatial differentiation of cultivated land pressure in the late stage of the study using geo-graphical detector as well as multi-scale geographically weighted regression model. The results indicated that: 1) in the study period, the global cultivated land pressure index of the study area decreased gradually, but cultivated land pressure increased locally in a significant way, especially in the central and southern Shandong Province; 2) the spatial pattern of cultivated land pressure manifested global clus-tering features. Hot and secondary-hot spots presented a narrowing and clustering trend, whereas cold and secondary-cold spots manifes-ted a spreading and clustering trend; 3) average slope, the proportion of non-grain crops, population urbanization rate, and multiple crop-ping index have significant effects on the spatial differentiation of cultivated land pressure. The former three factors were positively cor-related with cultivated land pressure, and the last factor was negatively correlated with cultivated land pressure; and 4) the amount of cultivated land has increased in the central and southern Shandong Province through land consolidation which, nonetheless, failed to im-prove the grain production. In regards to major grain producing areas similar to the HEZ in China, the authors suggest that great import-ance should be given to the balance of the quality and quantity of cultivated land, the optimization of agricultural production factors and the rational control of non-grain crops, thus providing a powerful guarantee for grain security in China.