Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Estimation of mountainous farmland area in China based on GIS and RS: A case study of Lincheng County

Author(s):

Limei Tan ^{1, 4}, J. T. Liu ^1*, Yuecun Ma ^2*, H. T. Liu ^{1, 4}, H. J. Liu ¹, M. R. Laurenson ³

Recieved Date: 2009-01-09, Accepted Date: 2009-04-11

Abstract:

China is currently faced with a growing shortage of farmland. In 2006, there were only 0.095 hm² of farmland per capita. Much of China is mountains, but few research papers focused on mountain farmland. At the same time, because of the complex topography and dispersed field blocks, it is hard to get the correct mountainous farmland area. In this paper, we use an effective method named RS to get the correct mountainous farmland area and location. The objective of this research was to find how many farmlands existing in mountainous area and compare our estimation with official statistics. We selected Lincheng County as studying area. The study involved GIS analysis with resolutions of 90 m SRTM DEM, 2.5 m panchromatic SPOT5 to identify farmland in the county. The accuracy of our classification was tested by visiting sampled sites and the classification was accurate in 90% of cases. The results showed considerable differences between estimation of farmland derived from image interpretation and those from official statistics. The mountainous farmland area based on image interpretation was 20,842 hm². The differences were due to three reasons including the policy of conversion of farmland into forest, the difficulty in little field statistics and serious water erosion. After all, there is a large potential in exploiting the mountainous farmland to supply the food production. When calculating the grain production potential and human carrying capacity, the function of mountainous farmland in food production must be considered closely.

Keywords:

Mountainous farmland, Geographical Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS)

---

Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2009
Volume: 7
Issue: 2
Category: Environment
Pages: 769-772

---

Full text for Subscribers

---

Information:

Note to users

The requested document is freely available only to subscribers/registered users with an online subscription to the Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment. If you have set up a personal subscription to this title please enter your user name and password. All abstracts are available for free.

Article purchasing

If you like to purchase this specific document such as article, review or this journal issue, contact us. Specify the title of the article or review, issue, number, volume and date of the publication. Software and compilation, Science & Technology, all rights reserved. Your use of this website details or service is governed by terms of use. Authors are invited to check from time to time news or information.

---

Purchase this Article:   20 Purchase PDF Order Reprints for 15

---

Share this article :