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Urban-Expansion Driven Farmland Loss Follows with the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: Evidence from Temporal Analysis in Beijing, China

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Geoinformatics in Sustainable Ecosystem and Society (GSES 2019, GeoAI 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1228))

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Abstract

Since its Reform and Opening-Up, China has been undergoing an unprecedented urbanization process, primarily manifested by intensive urban sprawl and continuous farmland shrinkage. However, few studies have given heed to the interrelation of these two phenomena at a finer spatiotemporal resolution, and limited researches have well quantified what controls the temporal rates of urban-expansion driven farmland loss. By considering Beijing as a case study, here we quantified the rates, patterns, spatiotemporal dynamics and interactions of urban expansion and farmland loss from 1980 to 2015 using the annual land-use/land-cover data. Additionally, by introducing the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, we further explored the relationship between urban-expansion driven farmland loss and economic growth. Results showed that rapid urban expansion (1592.57 km2) and extensive farmland loss (1591.36 km2) were observed during the study period. Three urban growth modes coexisted, where the edge-expansion was dominant (780.98 km2, 49.06%), followed by the infilling (675.85 km2, 42.44%) and the outlying (135.72 km2, 8.50%). Urban expansion was identified to be the dominant driver of farmland loss (96.13%), leading to a more spatially irregular and fragmented distribution of the farmland extent. Lastly, an inverted U-shape relationship was verified between urban-expansion driven farmland loss and economic growth, which indicated a shift from extensive to intensive and economizing land-use patterns in the future.

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Acknowledgement

This research was funded by Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China under the National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFA0600104), and donations from Delos Living LLC and the Cyrus Tang Foundation to Tsinghua University. We would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions, which greatly help the improvement of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Ying Tu, Le Yu, Peng Gong & Bing Xu

  2. Joint Center for Global Change Studies, Beijing, 100084, China

    Ying Tu, Le Yu, Peng Gong & Bing Xu

  3. Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Bin Chen

  4. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Qinchuan Xin

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  1. Ying Tu
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Correspondence to Bing Xu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA

    Yichun Xie

  2. Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou, China

    Yong Li

  3. Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou, China

    Ji Yang

  4. Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou, China

    Jianhui Xu

  5. Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangzhou, China

    Yingbin Deng

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Tu, Y., Chen, B., Yu, L., Xin, Q., Gong, P., Xu, B. (2020). Urban-Expansion Driven Farmland Loss Follows with the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: Evidence from Temporal Analysis in Beijing, China. In: Xie, Y., Li, Y., Yang, J., Xu, J., Deng, Y. (eds) Geoinformatics in Sustainable Ecosystem and Society. GSES GeoAI 2019 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1228. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6106-1_29

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