A Multi-criteria Evaluation Approach to Access Agricultural Land Use Potential on the Loess Plateau of China
This study applied a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) approach to evaluate agriculture land use potential in Yuzhong County (Gansu Province) on the Loess Plateau of China. We selected six environmental variables for study: slope, altitude, precipitation, temperature, soil organic matter and distance to water because of their importance to agriculture. Our MCE approach, which integrates spatially-explicit maps of these variables using a geographic information system (GIS), we developed agricultural suitability indices (ASI) to serve as proxies for the agricultural potential of the landscape. An analysis of the ASI found that certain environmental variables are correlated with the spatial distribution (i) crop yields (both subsistence grain and cash crop yields) ); (ii) farming population density (r=0.89, p < 0.0), (iii) subsistence grain yield (r=0.86, p < 0.0), (iv) cash crop yield (r=0.85, p < 0.0), (iv) gross agricultural output (r=0.84, p < 0.0) and (v) farmers income (r=0.79, p < 0.0). This study indicates that the ASI is a useful tool for accessing agriculture land use in Gansu Province and since this province is representative of complex landscapes found in the region, further suggests it may have value for agriculture-based policy decision-making throughout the greater Loess Plateau of China.
water supply agricultural population crop yield crop type agricultural income
Jiansheng Ye Fengmin Li Guojun Sun Yaxiong Chen Yanling Mou
MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology,School of Life Science,Lanzhou University,730000,Lanzhou,China Corresponding author.
国际会议
北京
英文
1-9
2009-10-14（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）