The basic characteristics and spatial patterns of global cultivated land change since the 1980s

doi:10.1007/s11442-017-1405-5

Abstract

Abstract:

In this paper, we analyzed the spatial patterns of cultivated land change between 1982 and 2011 using global vector-based land use/land cover data. (1) Our analysis showed that the total global cultivated land area increased by 528.768×10⁴ km² with a rate of 7.920×10⁴ km²/a, although this increasing trend was not significant. The global cultivated land increased fastest in the 1980s. Since the 1980s, the cultivated land area in North America, South America and Oceania increased by 170.854×10⁴ km², 107.890×10⁴ km², and 186.492×10⁴ km², respectively. In contrast, that in Asia, Europe and Africa decreased by 23.769×10⁴ km², 4.035×10⁴ km² and 86.76×10⁴ km², respectively. Furthermore, the cultivated land area in North America, South America and Oceania exhibited significant increasing trends of 7.236× 10⁴ km²/a, 2.780×10⁴ km²/a and 3.758×10⁴ km²/a, respectively. On the other hand, that of Asia, Europe and Africa exhibited decreasing trend rates of -5.641×10⁴ km²/a, -0.831×10⁴ km²/a and -0.595×10⁴ km²/a, respectively. Moreover, the decreasing trend in Asia was significant. (2) Since the 1980s, the increase in global cultivated lands was mainly due to converted grasslands and woodlands, which accounted for 53.536% and 26.148% of the total increase, respectively. The increase was found in southern and central Africa, eastern and northern Australia, southeastern South America, central US and Alaska, central Canada, western Russia, northern Finland and northern Mongolia. Among them, Botswana in southern Africa experienced an 80%-90% increase, making it the country with the highest increase worldwide. (3) Since the 1980s, the total area of cultivated lands converted to other types of land was 1071.946×10⁴ km². The reduction was mainly converted to grasslands and woodlands, which accounted for 57.482% and 36.000%, respectively. The reduction occurred mainly in southern Sudan in central Africa, southern and central US, southern Russia, and southern European countries including Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Hungary. The greatest reduction occurred in southern Africa with a 60% reduction. (4) The cultivated lands in all the continents analyzed exhibited a trend of expansion to high latitudes. Additionally, most countries displayed an expansion of newly increased cultivated lands and the reduction of the original cultivated lands.

Key words: cultivated lands, characteristics of change, spatial pattern, global, 1980s

Ziyan YAO, Lijuan ZHANG, Shihao TANG, Xiaxiang LI, Tiantian HAO. The basic characteristics and spatial patterns of global cultivated land change since the 1980s[J].Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2017, 27(7): 771-785.

Figures/Tables 14

Figure 1

Table 1

Figure 2

Table 2

Table 3

Figure 3

Figure 4

Table 4

Table 5

Figure 5

Table 6

Comparisons between our results and the results of previous studies"

	The results of previous studies	Our results
1	Xie and Cheng (1999) reported that the global cultivated lands showed an increasing trend before 1985 and a decreasing trend between 1985 and 1995.	We found that the global cultivated lands showed a decreasing trend between 1985 and 1995. We further pointed out that the reduction was not significant at a rate of 19.772×10⁴ km²/a.
2	Lepers et al. (2005) found that the global cultivated land increased from 1981 to 1990 in all the continents analyzed, and that the main areas that increased were in southeastern Asia, Bangladesh, the Indus River basin, Middle East, Central Asia and the Great Plains of the United States.	The cultivated lands had an increasing trend in Asia and South America from 1982 to 1990, but the cultivated lands had a decreasing trend in other continents. The areas with increased cultivated lands were mainly located in southeastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and the areas with reduced cultivated lands were primarily distributed in the areas near the equator in Africa, southeastern United States and eastern China (Figure 6).
3	Waisanen and Bliss (2002) demonstrated that the cultivated land area in the United States showed an increasing trend from 1982 to 1992.	We found that the cultivated lands in the United States increased from 1982 to 1992, but the increase was not significant. The increased areas were mainly located in central and western regions (Figure 7a).
4	Du et al. (2015) indicated that from 1980 to 2005 the cultivated lands of Brazil increased rapidly in all regions except the northern tropical rain forest area.	The cultivated lands of Brazil presented an increasing trend from 1980 to 2005, this was mainly due to converted grasslands and woodlands (Figure 7b).
5	Dewan and Yamaguchi (2009) reported that from 1960 to 2005 the cultivated lands in Bangladesh continuously declined and that it was due to conversion into woodlands and construction lands.	Between 1982 and 2005 the cultivated lands in Bangladesh showed a rapid decrease that was mainly due to conversion into grasslands and woodlands (Figure 7c).
6	Abbas (2009) determined that from 1975 to 2005 the cultivated land in Nigeria expanded towards the southern forest area, while the original cultivated land area reduced.	The cultivated lands in Nigeria expanded by 214197.544 km² towards the southern forest area, while the original cultivated lands reduced by 187354.798 km² from 1982 to 2005 (Figure 7d).
7	Müller and Sikor (2006) found that many cultivated lands were abandoned in southeastern Albania from 1988 to 2003.	The cultivated land area in Albania significantly reduced from 1988 to 2003; the decrease was mainly due to a conversion into grasslands.
8	Ramankutty and Foley (1998) reported that the global cultivated land area was 1800×10⁴ km²; the land was concentrated in Asia and Europe, followed by North America and Africa in the 1990s.	We calculated the global cultivated land area as 1845.761×10⁴ km². The lands were mainly located in southern Europe, northeastern Mongolia, eastern China, the area near the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin in the United States, sub-Saharan Africa, Republic of the Congo, and southern Democratic Republic of the Congo in Africa.
9	Ramankutty and Foley (1999) determined that the cultivated land area showed an increasing trend from 1700 to 1992. After 1700, the fastest expansion of cultivated lands occurred in Europe, followed by North America and South America.	We analyzed the spatial change of global cultivated lands from 1982 to 2011, which was very recent and covered a short time span. Moreover, we found that the most rapid cultivated land expansion occurred in Oceania.
10	Goldewijk et al. (2011) examined the data of global cultivated lands from 1700 to 1990, and concluded that the global cultivated land area increased by 5.5-fold during the past three centuries.	We analyzed the spatial change of global cultivated lands from 1982 to 2011, and concluded that the global cultivated land area increased by 1.273-fold during the past 30 years.

Table 6

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

References 30

[1]	Abbas I I, 2009. An overview of land cover changes in Nigeria, 1975-2005.Journal of Geography & Regional Planning, 5(12): 62-65. doi: 10.1126/science.opms.p1000045
[2]	Chhabra A, Geist H, Houghton R A et al., 2006. Multiple impacts of land-use/cover change. In: Land-Use and Land-Cover Change. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 71-116.
[3]	Dewan A M, Yamaguchi Y, 2009. Using remote sensing and GIS to detect and monitor land use and land cover change in Dhaka Metropolitan of Bangladesh during 1960-2005.Environmental Monitoring & Assessment, 150(150): 237-249. doi: 10.1007/s10661-008-0226-5 pmid: 18317939
[4]	Du Guoming, Kuang Wenhui, Meng Fanhaoet al., 2015. Spatiotemporal pattern and driving forces of land use/cover change in Brazil.Progress in Geography, 34(1): 73-82. (in Chinese)
[5]	Findell K L, Pitman A J, England M Het al., 2009. Regional and global impacts of land cover change and sea surface temperature anomalies.Journal of Climate, 22(12): 3248-3269. doi: 10.1175/2008JCLI2580.1
[6]	Forster P, Ramaswamy V, Artaxo P et al., 2007. Changes in atmospheric constituents and in radiative forcing. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[7]	Godfray H C, Beddington J R, Crute L Ret al., 2010. Food security: The challenge of feeding 9 billion people.Science, 327(5967): 812-818. doi: 10.1126/science.1185383
[8]	Goldewijk K K, Beusen A, Drecht G Vet al., 2011. The HYDE 3.1 spatially explicit database of human-induced global land-use change over the past 12,000 years.Global Ecology and Biogeography, 20(1): 73-86. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00587.x
[9]	He Fanneng, Li Meijiao, Liu Haolong, 2016. Reconstruction of cropland area at Lu scale and its spatial-temporal characteristics in the Northern Song Dynasty.Acta Geographica Sinica, 71(11): 1967-1978. (in Chinese) doi: 10.11821/dlxb201611008
[10]	Hudson W D, 1987. Correct formulation of the Kappa coefficient of agreement.Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, 53(4): 421-422. doi: 10.1016/0031-8663(87)90057-3
[11]	Lepers E, Lambin E F, Janetos A Cet al., 2005. A synthesis of information on rapid land-cover change for the period 1981-2000.BioScience, 55(2): 115-124. doi: 10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0115:ASOIOR]2.0.CO;2
[12]	Liu Jiyuan, 2000. A study on spatial-temporal feature of modem land use change in China.Quaternary Sciences, 20(3): 229-239. (in Chinese)
[13]	Liu Jiyuan, Kuang Wenhui, Zhang Zengxianget al., 2014. Spatiotemporal characteristics, patterns and causes of land use changes in China since the late 1980s.Acta Geographica Sinica, 69(1): 3-14. (in Chinese) doi: 10.1007/s11442-014-1082-6
[14]	Liu Yang, Liu Ronggao, 2015. Retrieval of global long-term leaf area index from LTDR AVHRR and MODIS observations.Journal of Geo-Information Science, 17(11): 1304-1312. (in Chinese) doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1047.2015.01304
[15]	Ma Kaiyu, Ding yuguo,Tu Qipu et al., 1993. Principles and Methods of Climate Statistics. Beijing: China Meteorological Press, 77-82. (in Chinese)
[16]	Müller D, Sikor T, 2006. Effects of postsocialist reforms on land cover and land use in south-eastern Albania.Applied Geography, 26(3): 175-191. doi: 10.1016/j.apgeog.2006.09.002
[17]	Ramankutty N, Achard F, Alves Det al., 2005. Global changes in land cover.IHDP Newsletter, (3): 4-5.
[18]	Ramankutty N, Delire C, Snyder P, 2006. Feedbacks between agriculture and climate: An illustration of the potential unintended consequences of human land use activities.Global and Planetary Change, 54(1/2): 79-93. doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2005.10.005
[19]	Ramankutty N, Evan A T, Monfreda Cet al., 2008. Farming the planet: 1. Geographic distribution of global agricultural lands in the year 2000.Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 22(1): 567-568. doi: 10.1029/2007GB002952
[20]	Ramankutty N, Foley J A, 1998. Characterizing patterns of global land use: An analysis of global croplands data. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 12(4): 667-685. doi: 10.1029/98GB02512
[21]	Ramankutty N, Foley J A, 1999. Estimating historical changes in global land cover: Croplands from 1700 to 1992.Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 13(4): 997-1027. doi: 10.1029/1999GB900046
[22]	Shang Rong, Liu Ronggao, Liu Yang, 2015. Generation of global long-term albedo product based on the background knowledge.Journal of Geo-Information Science, 17(11): 1313-1322. (in Chinese)
[23]	Shi Peijun, Wang Jing'ai, Chen Jinget al., 2006. The future of human-environment interaction research in geography: Lessons from the 6th Open Meeting of IHDP.Acta Geographica Sinica, 61(2): 115-126. (in Chinese) doi: 10.1016/S1002-0160(06)60035-0
[24]	Shi Xueli, Zhang Fang, Zhou Wenyanet al., 2015. Impacts of CG-LTDR land cover dataset updates on the ground temperature simulation with BCC_AVIM 1.0.Journal of Geo-Information Science, 17(11): 1294-1303. (in Chinese)
[25]	Tao B, Tian H Q, Chen G Set al., 2013. Terrestrial carbon balance in tropical Asia: Contribution from cropland expansion and land management.Global and Planetary Change, 100(1): 85-98. doi: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2012.09.006
[26]	Tian H Q, Chen G S, Zhang Chiet al., 2012. Century-scale responses of ecosystem carbon storage and flux to multiple environmental changes in the southern United States.Ecosystems, 15(4): 674-694. doi: 10.1007/s10021-012-9539-x
[27]	Waisanen P J, Bliss N B, 2002. Changes in population and agricultural land in conterminous United States counties, 1790 to 1997. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 16(4): 84-1-84-19. doi: 10.1029/2001GB001843
[28]	Xie Gaodi, Cheng Shengkui, 1999. A study on global land use change under the pressure of population growth.Journal of Natural Resources, 14(3): 193-199. (in Chinese)
[29]	Ye Yu, Fang Xiuqi, Ren Yuyuet al., 2009. Coverage changes of cropland in northeast China during the past 300 years. Science in China Series D: Earth Sciences, 39(3): 340-350. (in Chinese)
[30]	Zhao Wenwu, 2012. Arable land change dynamics and their driving forces for the major countries of the world.Acta Ecologica Sinica, 32(20): 6452-6462. (in Chinese) doi: 10.5846/stxb201203080314

Global land use dataset	ESA-GlobCover	FAO food and agriculture database	NASA-MCD12Q1
Kappa value	0.6147	0.7104	0.8184
Agreement	Substantial	Substantial	Almost perfect

	Year	Asia	Europe	Africa	North America	South America	Oceania	Global
Cultivated land area (10⁴ km²)	1982	710.016	287.521	444.869	280.407	118.850	89.331	1939.573
	2011	686.247	283.486	531.629	451.261	226.740	275.823	2468.340
	Average annual cultivated land area	749.801	267.166	494.680	333.512	167.752	158.975	2171.886
	Cultivate land area change (1982-2011)	-23.769	-4.035	86.760	170.854	107.89	186.492	528.767
Tendency rate	1982-2011	-5.641^*	-0.813	-0.595	7.236^**	2.780^*	3.758^*	6.852
	1982-1989	2.382	-1.136	9.812	-2.277	10.080	2.226	20.650
	1990-1999	-1.335	-8.769*	-9.050	-6.821	-3.073	-0.209	-29.780
	2000-2011	-0.266	0.702	-0.320	2.057	1.297	2.039	5.553

	Asia	Europe	Africa	North America	South America	Oceania	Global
Land area converted into cultivated lands	325.826	135.203	407.844	299.867	189.500	230.331	1599.753
Land area converted from cultivated lands	349.725	139.325	321.317	129.452	81.599	43.089	1071.946

	Area of cultivated lands converted from other types of land use (km²)
	Asia		Europe		Africa	North America		South America	Oceania	Global
Woodland	587044.033		538977.272		497117.371	1295193.574		1049514.128	210610.092	4183030.965
Grassland	1685071.620		700578.490		2693786.908	1527020.934		768167.250	1168947.585	8564519.048
Construction land	8745.380		3418.037		852.623	2675.515		1455.492	125.654	17290.898
Wetland	53106.836		29938.381		24623.822	27727.065		16697.013	18878.816	231618.103
Water area	12878.212		4244.370		4824.171	7055.778		3649.667	3989.419	57099.131
Unused land	911410.987		74871.195		857230.925	138995.122		55494.096	900758.834	2943976.114
	Area percentages of cultivated lands converted from other types of land use (%)
Woodland	18.017	39.864		12.189			43.192	55.384	9.144	26.148
Grassland	51.717	51.817		66.050			50.923	40.537	50.751	53.536
Construction land	0.268	0.253		0.021			0.089	0.077	0.005	0.108
Wetland	1.630	2.214		0.604			0.925	0.881	0.820	1.448
Water area	0.395	0.314		0.118			0.235	0.193	0.173	0.357
Unused land	27.972	5.538		21.019			4.635	2.928	39.107	18.403

	Area of cultivated lands converted into other types of land use (km²)
	Asia	Europe	Africa	North America	South America	Oceania	Global
Woodland	1217276.742	300777.368	1410706.162	399259.025	341994.955	141504.896	3859019.347
Grassland	2017539.664	1065004.971	1647566.868	788780.992	373549.898	258183.988	6161722.976
Construction land	15804.035	10816.968	1370.660	4030.622	723.119	151.457	33117.082
Wetland	57448.359	6470.664	17104.849	25935.501	41131.877	6184.790	166437.848
Water area	19388.005	2573.700	7587.074	8548.657	15530.140	6160.882	62663.411
Unused land	169794.097	7604.133	128833.594	67964.712	43064.184	18703.268	436504.043
	Area percentages of cultivated lands converted into other types of land use (%)
Woodland	34.807	21.588	43.904	30.842	41.911	32.840	36.000
Grassland	57.689	76.440	51.275	60.932	45.779	59.919	57.482
Construction land	0.452	0.776	0.043	0.311	0.089	0.035	0.309
Wetland	1.643	0.464	0.532	2.003	5.041	1.435	1.553
Water area	0.554	0.185	0.236	0.660	1.903	1.430	0.585
Unused land	4.855	0.546	4.010	5.250	5.278	4.341	4.072