Reoccupying Ecological Land for Excessively Expanded Rust Belt Cities in Traditional Grain Bases: An Eco-Economic Trade-Off Perspective

Abstract

The optimization of ecological resource allocation is increasingly seen as a potential solution for urban revitalization and sustainable land use planning, and the key point is to assess and simulate the spatial arrangement of the ecological land. In this study, we proposed a conceptual framework with the aim of reoccupying ecological resources for rust belt cities from the perspective of eco-economic trade-offs. The ecological security pattern, the urban development pattern, and the ecological quality of cropland were constructed and evaluated to measure the development level of an ecological system and a socio-economic system. Furthermore, the results were used as the constraints that influenced land use distribution to simulate the ecological land reoccupation pattern. The suitable area, the preservation area, the configurable area, and the unsuitable area in the reoccupation pattern accounted for 6.94%, 49.97%, 28.17%, and 0.69%, respectively. Significantly, under strict cropland protection policies, the available space for ecological land expansion was heavily compressed. Therefore, the emphasis on agricultural production should be reexamined to release more space for ecological resources. This method could be an effective pathway to alleviate the pressures on urban and natural space caused by the competition between land-use activities, such as economic development, agricultural production, and ecological conservation. The findings are expected to promote urban revitalization, green agriculture, and sustainable social development in rust belt cities, and provide certain references for the utilization of land resources and regional policy making.

The Effect of Urban Expansion on Peripheral Agricultural Lands in Makurdi City

“…In order to ascertain the physical expansion of urban activities and their effects on agricultural areas in Makurdi over the research period, a Land Use Land Cover Change (LULCC) analysis was carried out utilizing Remotely Sensed (RS) data and Geographical Information System (GIS). The term "Land Use/Land Cover Change" (LULCC) refers to the modification of the earth's surface brought about by human activity worldwide (Gao, 2010;Liu et al, 2020). This method is used because satellite remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) offer precise georeferencing procedures, digital formats suitable for computer processing, and repetitive data acquisition (Rahman et al, 2011;Zahra, 2013).…”