The Spatiotemporal Changes in Ecological–Environmental Quality Caused by Farmland Consolidation Using Google Earth Engine: A Case Study from Liaoning Province in China

Abstract

Farmland consolidation (FC) is among the measures to solve farmland issues, such as farmland fragmentation, and its impact on the ecological environment has always been controversial. In terms of long-term series and large-area analysis, the calculation of a large amount of data makes the analysis of the ecological–environmental quality of farmland consolidation very difficult. To solve this problem, our study applied a remote sensing ecological index model on the Google Earth Engine platform to analyze the changes in the ecological–environmental quality in two prefecture-level cities in Liaoning Province over the past 20 years. In addition, we analyzed the impacts of FC projects on the ecological environment from 2006 to 2018 and compared them to farmland without consolidation. The study results show that FC caused negative impacts on the quality of the ecological environment during the FC period (2006–2018) and that the FC’s positive effects take time to develop. In each FC phase, the results showed that FC exhibited negative effects before 2010 because the proportion of ecological–environmental quality reductions (0–47.67%) was higher than the proportion of increases (9.62–46.15%) in those FC phases. Since 2011, the area experiencing positive ecological–environmental benefits (31.96–72.01%) enabled by FC is higher than the area of negative impact (2.24–18.07%). This seems to be triggered by policy evolution. Based on the trend analysis, the proportion of FC areas with improved ecological–environmental quality grew faster (Gini index decreased 0.09) than that of farmland without consolidation (Gini index decreased 0.05) from before FC to after FC. Moreover, the new FC projects (2011–2018) performed better than the early projects (2006–2010), which may be due to policy evolution and technological advancements. However, the new FC projects (2011–2018) caused a dramatic decrease in ecological–environmental quality in a small number of areas due to the study time constraints. In conclusion, we believe that FC could improve the ecological–environmental quality of farmland, whereas some measures are needed to reduce its temporal negative impact on ecological–environmental quality, which may be caused by human interference. The remote sensing ecological index obtained using the Google Earth Engine platform provided an effective and reliable method for detecting the impacts of FC on the ecological–environmental quality of farmland. This could provide the basis and support for the monitoring of ecological–environmental changes in FC areas at a regional level.

Potential of an Area in Terms of Pro-Climate Solutions in a Land Consolidation Project

“…Environmental quality in land consolidation projects is a very important research trend. Authors of the studies use various indicators, criteria, and scales to assess ecological environmental quality, including the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [112,113], the environmental index (EI) [113], and remote sensing data [4,[114][115][116]. Moreover, an analysis of ecological sensitivity in land consolidation projects was also proposed [117].…”

Agricultural land protection in China: current status and historical background

“…Zhang et al analyzed the research on remote sensing methods to obtain indicators for assessing farmland quality, outlining the methods commonly used at present and proposing the establishment of a remote sensing big data platform for assessing the quality of arable land [11], Yang et al used satellite data to assess the productivity of high quality farmland in the study area, and the results showed that the productivity of this type of farmland is higher than that of ordinary farmland [12]. Zhang et al used Google Earth Engine to analyze the environmental changes caused by the consolidation of farmland in the study area, and the results showed that farmland consolidation may have a short-term negative impact on the environment, and the positive effect will appear after more than 3 years, and relevant government policies may also have an impact [13]. Luo et al used satellite data to detect the change in the area of abandoned farmland in the study area from 2015 to 2019 to assess the impact of policies on abandoned farmland, and the results showed that more policies are not necessarily effective, and that attention should be paid to the scientific basis of policies [14].…”

Construction and Optimization of an Ecological Network in the Comprehensive Land Consolidation Project of a Small Rural Town in Southeast China

“…The main contents of comprehensive land consolidation include agricultural land consolidation, rural built-up land consolidation and rural ecological restoration. There are many studies on agricultural land consolidation and built-up land consolidation [7,8]. There are fewer studies on ecological restoration and conservation in the countryside, and in particular, optimization of ecological security patterns in rural areas.…”