Expansion of Rural Settlements on High-Quality Arable Land in Tongzhou District in Beijing, China

Abstract

Settlement expansion caused by urbanization is an important factor leading to the loss of arable land across the world. Due to various factors in China, such as institutional problems, the total number of rural settlements is decreasing, while the total area continues to increase. Rural settlements expand mainly into arable land, resulting in a significant loss of high-quality farmland, thus threatening long-term food security. However, research on this subject is relatively scarce. In this study, using KeyHole and RESURS F1 satellite remote sensing images, we examined the spatial expansion of rural settlements in Tongzhou District, Beijing, in 1972 and 1991. Then, the consumption of high-quality arable land by rural settlements expansion was assessed. It was found that the overall accuracy of the produced maps for 1972 and 1991 were 93% and 90%, respectively. The accuracy of mapped changes from 1972 to 1991 was as high as 90%. From 1972 to 1991 and from 1991 to 2015, the rural settlements in Tongzhou District expanded by 51.54% and 79.91% respectively, with 53.72% and 60.64% of the expanded rural settlements being on arable land. Rural settlements expanded mainly into high-quality arable land at the beginning of the study period, whereas later on, medium- and low-quality farmland was also occupied, albeit to a lesser degree.

The Expansion Mechanism of Rural Residential Land and Implications for Sustainable Regional Development: Evidence from the Baota District in China’s Loess Plateau

“…To achieve sustainable regional development and urban-rural integration, it is crucial to recognize the evolution progress and formation mechanism of rural residential land expansion. However, extant research has only explored rural residential land spatial distribution and area change [25,26], ignoring the change characteristics and mechanisms of newly added residential land [27]. In addition, most of these studies focused on plain areas [28,29] and traditional agricultural areas [30], but less on mountainous areas and ecologically fragile areas [31].…”

“…As the world's largest developing country, China's rapid urbanization has driven unprecedented rural residential land changes over the past few decades. From 2007 to 2015, China experienced a 257.27 million hectare increase in rural residential land [25]. Some problems such as population outflow, eco-environmental pollution, and economic recession, appeared in rural development with the rapid progress of urbanization [32,33].…”

Uncertainty Problems in Image Change Detection

“…Besides Landsat images, a 2010 classification map was acquired from the GlobaLand30, "30 m Global Land Cover (GLC) data product" [38], which is a global dataset with level 1 land cover classification scheme based on the year 2010. The test area, a sub-area of 518 × 482 pixels from a Landsat image ( Figure 1) in the eastern plain of Beijing undergoes rapid urban expansion [39] and was hence selected for a pilot study. In the test area, there are three land cover types: artificial surface, cultivated land, and water, respectively composing 49.6%, 49.6%, and 0.8% of the study area ( Figure 2).…”

Spatial Differentiation Characteristics and Driving Mechanism of Rural Settlements Transformation in the Metropolis: A Case Study of Pudong District, Shanghai

“…Many studies explored the spatial evolution modes of rural settlements at different scales in China, including the national, regional, provincial, and urban scales (Li T. et al, 2015;Tu et al, 2018;Yanbo et al, 2018). Meanwhile, different types of areas were analyzed, such as the Bohai rim region (Li T. et al, 2015), the capital region (Song., 2019), the mountain area (Jiang W. et al, 2016), the central region (Wang et al, 2017). However, these studies can only reveal the morphological changes of rural settlements themselves.…”