*
 

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry

*

Future land use and food security scenarios for the Guyuan district of remote western China

Lin Zhen (1)   , Xiangzheng Deng (2), Yunjie Wei (1), Qunou Jiang (3), Yingzhi Lin (2), Katharina Helming (4), Chao Wang (1), Hannes Jochen König (4), Jie Hu (1)

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 7, Issue 6, Pages 372-384 (2014)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor1170-007
Published: May 19, 2014 - Copyright © 2014 SISEF

Research Articles

Collection/Special Issue: RegioResources21
Spatial information and participation of socio-ecological systems: experiences, tools and lessons learned for land-use planning
Guest Editors: Daniele La Rosa, Carsten Lorz, Hannes Jochen König, Christine Fürst


Government policy is a major human factor that causes changes in land use. Thus, simulating the dynamics of land-use systems provides important information to support decisions on land management and land-use planning, and to analyze and quantify the consequences of policies. In the present study, we predicted land-use changes and their potential impacts on food security in the environmentally fragile Guyuan District, in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of north-central China, under the influence of a program to convert sloping agricultural land to conservation uses. Baseline and conservation policy scenarios (2005 to 2020) were developed based on input from local stakeholders and expert knowledge. For the baseline and conservation policies, we formulated high-, moderate-, and low-growth scenarios, analyzed the driving mechanisms responsible for the land-use dynamics, and then applied a previously developed “dynamics of land systems” model to simulate changes in land uses based on the driving mechanisms. We found that spatially explicit policies can promote the conversion of land to more sustainable uses; however, decreasing the amount of agricultural and urban land and increasing grassland and forest cover will increase the risk of grain shortages, and the effect will be more severe under the conservation and high-growth scenarios than under the baseline and low-growth scenarios. The Guyuan case study suggests that, during the next decade, important trade-offs between environmental conservation and food security will inevitably occur. Future land-use decisions should carefully consider the balance between land resource conservation, agricultural production, and urban expansion.

  Keywords


Land-use Patterns, Scenario Analysis, Dynamics of Land Systems Modeling, Food Security, Guyuan District, North-central China

Authors’ address

(1)
Lin Zhen
Yunjie Wei
Chao Wang
Jie Hu
Department of Natural Resources and Environment Security, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
(2)
Xiangzheng Deng
Yingzhi Lin
Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (China)
(3)
Qunou Jiang
School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, 100038 Beijing (China)
(4)
Katharina Helming
Hannes Jochen König
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Eberswalder Straße 84, D-15374 Müncheberg (Germany)

Corresponding author

 

Citation

Zhen L, Deng X, Wei Y, Jiang Q, Lin Y, Helming K, Wang C, König HJ, Hu J (2014). Future land use and food security scenarios for the Guyuan district of remote western China. iForest 7: 372-384. - doi: 10.3832/ifor1170-007

Academic Editor

Marco Borghetti

Paper history

Received: Oct 31, 2013
Accepted: Nov 26, 2013

First online: May 19, 2014
Publication Date: Dec 01, 2014
Publication Time: 5.80 months

Breakdown by View Type

(Waiting for server response...)

Article Usage

Total Article Views: 29000
(from publication date up to now)

Breakdown by View Type
HTML Page Views: 22708
Abstract Page Views: 1264
PDF Downloads: 3895
Citation/Reference Downloads: 33
XML Downloads: 1100

Web Metrics
Days since publication: 3860
Overall contacts: 29000
Avg. contacts per week: 52.59

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Nov 2020)

Total number of cites (since 2014): 16
Average cites per year: 2.29

 

Publication Metrics

by Dimensions ©

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

 
(1)
Belsky JM, Siebert SF (2003)
Cultivating cacao: Implications of sun-grown cacao on local food security and environmental sustainability. Agriculture and Human Values 20: 277-285.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(2)
Brown LR (1995)
Who will feed China? Wake-up call for a small planet. WW Norton& Company, New York, USA, pp. 163.
Gscholar
(3)
Caradec Y, Lucas S, Vidal C (1999)
Agricultural landscapes: over half of Europe’s territory maintained by farmers. European Commission’s Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development, web site.
Online | Gscholar
(4)
CCICED (2004)
China’s agricultural and rural development in the new era: challenges, opportunities and policy options’ policy recommendations and executive summary. China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, pp. 23. [in Chinese with English summary]
Online | Gscholar
(5)
CDRG (2007)
11-12th five-year development plan of Guyuan district. Commission of Development and Reform of Guyuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Guyuan, China, pp. 35. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(6)
Chen CC (2008)
Study on the ecosystem carrying capacity in Jinghe River Basin. PhD Dissertation, Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, pp. 184. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(7)
Corona P, Barbati A, Tomao A, Bertani R, Valentini R, Marchetti M, Fattorini L, Perugini L (2012)
Land use inventory as framework for environmental accounting: an application in Italy. iForest 5: 204-209.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(8)
Deng XZ, Su HB, Zhan JY (2008)
Integration of multiple data sources to simulate the dynamics of land systems. Sensors 8: 620-634.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(9)
Dong M, Zhong FN, Wang GJ (2005)
An empirical study on grain for grass and food security in less developed regions: a case study of Ningxia Hui Autonomous region. China Population, Resources and Environment 15 (1): 104-108. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(10)
DPS (1991)
China population statistics yearbook 1990. Department of Population Statistics, National Bureau of Statistics of China, Scientific and Technical Documents Publishing House, Beijing, China, pp. 771. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(11)
Du SF (2001)
Environmental economics. Encyclopedia Press, Beijing, China, pp. 102. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(12)
Feng ZM, Li XL (2000)
The stratagem of cultivated land and food supplies security: storing food in land - raising the comprehensive productivity of land resource of China. Geography and Territorial Research 16 (3): 1-5. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(13)
Feng ZM, Zhang PT, Song Y (2002)
Food security: the impact of land conversion from farmland to forest or grassland on grain production in Northwest China. Journal of Natural Resources, 17 (3): 299-306. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(14)
Feng ZM, Yang YZ, Zhang YQ, Zhang PT, Li YQ (2005)
Grain-for-green policy and its impacts on grain supply in West China. Land Use Policy 22 (4): 301-312.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(15)
Hao SL, Cheng BC, Zhao XM, Yu Q (2005)
Dynamic analysis on the spatial pattern of landscape of small watershed in loess hilly-gully region: a case study of Shanghuang test area in Guyuan. Science of Soil and Water Conservation 3 (2): 107-112. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(16)
Helming K, Tscherning K, Koenig B, Sieber S, Wiggering H, Kuhlman T, Wascher D, Perez-Soba M, Smeets P, Tabbush P, Dilly O, Huttl R, Bach H (2008)
Ex ante impact assessment of land use changes in European regions - the SENSOR approach. In: “Sustainability Impact Assessment of Land Use Changes” (Helming K, Perez-Soba M, Tabbush P eds). Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany, pp. 77-105.
Gscholar
(17)
Huang JK, Deng XZ, Rozelle S (2004)
Cultivated land conversion and bioproductivity in China. In: “Remote sensing and modeling of ecosystems for sustainability” (Gao W, Shaw R eds). Proceedings of the SPIE, Bellingham, Washington, DC, USA, pp. 135-148.
Gscholar
(18)
Jiang T, Shi YF (2003)
Global climatic warming, the Yangtze floods and potential loss. Advances in Earth Sciences 18 (2): 277-284. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(19)
König HJ, Zhen L, Helming K (2012)
Assessing the impact of the sloping land conversion program on rural sustainability in Guyuan, western China. Land Degradation & Development (early view).
CrossRef | Gscholar
(20)
König HJ, Uthes S, Schuler J, Zhen L, Purushothaman S, Suarma U, Sghaier M, Makokha S, Helming K, Sieber S, Chen L, Brouwer F, Morris J, Wiggering H (2013)
Regional impact assessment of land use scenarios in developing countries using the FoPIA approach: findings from five case studies. Journal of Environmental Management 127: 556-564.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(21)
König HJ, Podhora A, Helming K, Zhen L, Wang Z, Wübbeke J, Baumeister T, Du B, Yan H (2014)
Confronting international research topics with local stakeholder perspectives on multifunctional land use: the case of Inner Mongolia, China. iForest (early view)
CrossRef | Gscholar
(22)
Li AT (1999)
1998 Yangtze flood and fight against it. Yangtze River 30 (1): 1-7. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(23)
Lin GCS, Samuel PSH (2003)
China’s land resources and land-use change: insights from the 1996 land survey. Land Use Policy 20: 87-107.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(24)
Liu JY, Liu ML, Deng XZ, Zhuang DF, Zhang ZX, Luo D (2002)
The land-use and land-cover change database and its relative studies in China. Journal of Geographical Sciences 12 (3): 275-282.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(25)
Lu DD (1997)
Report on regional development of China. Commercial Press, Beijing, China, pp. 333. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(26)
Mander U, Helming K, Wiggering H (2007)
Multifunctional land use: meeting future demands for landscape goods and services. In: “Multifunctional land use: meeting future demands for landscape goods and services” (Mander U, Wiggering H, Helming K eds). Springer, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1-13.
Gscholar
(27)
Ministry of Land and Resources (2004)
Regulation on implementing protection of cultivated land nationwide. Beijing, China, pp. 38. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(28)
National Bureau of Statistics (2010)
Statistic Year Book of China. China Statistic Press, Beijing, China, pp. 1032. [in Chinese]
Gscholar
(29)
OGC (2007)
Guyuan yearbook 2007. Office of Guyuan Chorography, Chinese Cultural and Historical Press, Beijing, China, pp. 443. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(30)
Parés-Ramos I, Gould W, Aide TM (2008)
Agricultural abandonment, suburban growth, and forest expansion in Puerto Rico between 1991 and 2000. Ecology and Society 13 (2): 1.
Online | Gscholar
(31)
Ramankutty N, Foley JA, Olejniczak NJ (2002)
People on the land: changes in global population and croplands during the 20th century. Ambio 31 (3): 251-257.
Online | Gscholar
(32)
SBGC (2011)
Report of the 6th population census of Guyuan. Statistical Bureau of Guyuan City, Guyuan city of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, pp. 38. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(33)
State Council (1998)
Circular for conservation of forest resources and prohibition of deforestation and occupation of forest land. State Council, Beijing, China, pp. 2. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(34)
Tan S, Peng B (2003)
Examination of cultivated land utilization to guarantee our grain security and its recent adjustment thoughtfulness. Economic Geography 23 (3): 371-374. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(35)
Tao R, Xu ZG, Xu JT (2004)
Grain for green project, grain policy and sustainable development. Social Sciences in China 6: 25-38. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(36)
Thapa GB, Rasul G (2006)
Implications of changing national policies on land use in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. Journal of Environmental Management 81 (4): 441-453.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(37)
Turner BL, Moss RH, Skole D (1993)
Relating land use and global land-cover change: a proposal for an IGBP-HDP core project. IGBP Report No. 24/HDP Report No. 5, International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 65.
Online | Gscholar
(38)
Uchida E, Rozelle S, Deng XZ, Huang JK (2004)
Changes in cultivated land due to urbanization: China in an international perspective. CCAP Working Paper, Paper Presented in CCICED, Agricultural and Rural Development Working Meeting, Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy Sciences, Beijing, China, pp. 56.
Gscholar
(39)
Verburg PH, Chen YQ, Veldkamp TA (2000)
Spatial explorations of land use change and grain production in China. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 82: 333-354.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(40)
Verburg PH, Soepboer W, Veldkamp A, Limpiada R, Espaldon V (2002)
Modeling the spatial dynamics of regional land use: the CLUE-S model. Environment Management 30: 391-405.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(41)
Verburg PH, Schulp CJE, Witte N, Veldkamp TA (2006)
Downscaling of land use change scenarios to assess the dynamics of European landscapes. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 114: 39-56.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(42)
Wang WG, Pang XX, Song YX, Li RZ (2012)
The spatial differential features of construction land changes in China. Areal Research and Development 31 (1): 110-115. [in Chinese with English abstract]
Online | Gscholar
(43)
Xi J, Cao MM (2008)
Grain-for-Green program and its impacts on food security in hilly and gully area of Loess plateau in northern Shaanxi province: take Mizhi county in Yulin city as a case. Journal of Arid Land Resources and Environment 22 (8): 165-169. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(44)
Xu JT, Cao YY (2001)
Converting steep cropland to forest and grassland: efficiency and prospects of sustainability. International Economic Review 2: 56-60.
Gscholar
(45)
Xu ZG, Bennett MT, Tao R, Xu JT (2004)
China’s sloping land conversion programme four year on: current situation and pending issues. International Forestry Review 6: 317-327.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(46)
Yang H, Li XB (2000)
Cultivated land and food supply in China. Land Use Policy 17: 73-88.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(47)
Yang L, Xie GD, Zhen L, Leng YF, Guo GM (2005)
Spatio-temporal changes of land use in Jinghe watershed. Resources Science 27(4): 26-32. [in Chinese with English summary]
Online | Gscholar
(48)
Yang L (2006)
Landscape pattern changes and driving force analysis in Jinghe Watershed. PhD Dissertation, Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, pp. 108. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(49)
Zhang LC, Wu CC (1997)
The forecast of the regional pattern changes in China’s grain production in the early 21st century. National Territory and Land Economics 1: 16-19. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(50)
Zhang RY, Yang XL (1998)
History and brief analysis of drying up in Yellow River. Yellow River 20 (10): 38-40. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(51)
Zhang XB, Jiang SL, Shangguan ZP, Wang LX, Liu B (2006)
Study on the eco-agriculture construction and sustainable development in Jinghe watershed. Agricultural Research in the Arid Areas 24 (3): 138-142. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
(52)
Zhen L, Cao S, Cheng S, Xie G, Wei Y, Liu X, Li F (2010)
Arable land requirements based on food consumption patterns: Case study in rural Guyuan District, Western China. Ecological Economics 69 (7): 1443-1453.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(53)
Zhen L, Cao S, Wei Y, Dilly O, Liu X, Li F, Koenig H, Tscherning K, Helming K (2009)
Comparison of sustainability issues in two sensitive areas of China. Environmental Science & Policy 12 (8): 1153-1167.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(54)
Zhen L, Xie GD, Yang L, Cheng SK (2007)
Land use dynamics, farmers’ preference and policy implications in the Jinghe watershed of remote Northwestern China. Outlook on Agriculture 32 (2): 127-135.
CrossRef | Gscholar
(55)
Zhen L, Xie GD, Yang L, Cheng SK, Guo GM (2005)
Land-use change dynamics, driving forces and policy implications in Jinghe watershed of Western China. Resources Science 27 (4): 33-37. [in Chinese with English summary]
Gscholar
 

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. More info