Abstract:
This study aims to quantitatively evaluate the spatial intensity level and land type differences of the agricultural regions in China. The main functional zoning and provincial differences, the regional type classification and the dominant county were also employed from the perspective of the regional system of human-land relationship. In particular, the agricultural regional space was a multifunctional spatial system with the agricultural land use as the carrier with the production, life and ecology, rather than the connotation of the agricultural space in the National Territory Space Planning. The geographic representation was assumed as the human-land relationship in the agricultural field. A systematic and comprehensive spatial system of the interaction between natural and socio-economic elements was emphasized in the overall function and spatial optimization of the agricultural areas. Therefore, the quantitative evaluation was conducted on the agricultural regional space as an important carrier for the human agricultural activities. The classification, zoning and category was greatly contributed to the scientific understanding of the agricultural land system at regional scale. The practical needs were fully met for the agricultural spatial layout and pattern optimization of the land resources. Firstly, the concept of the agricultural regional space was introduced to construct a framework of the evaluation system, according to the land system science and agricultural regional system. Taking the remote sensing data of the land use types in 2020 as a carrier, the socioeconomic attributes were integrated, such as the population, GDP, roads, POI and night lights. Additionally, a top-down and step-by-step assessment was carried out on the intensity of land use in the regional space, according to the main function-oriented zoning, leading type classification and main purpose classification system. The distribution pattern and regional type of agricultural space were identified in the different regions under human-land interaction. Finally, the differentiated pathways of the sustainable agriculture were proposed for the different regional types. The specific examples were integrated to determine the influencing factors on the regional spatial differences in agriculture. The results show that the total area of the regional agriculture was 685.91×10
4km
2 in China. The intensity level shared a decreasing trend from the east to the west in 2020. In terms of the land types, the human activity impact intensity index of rural residential land was the highest, followed by the cultivated land, as well as the forest land and grassland were relatively low. A comparison was also made on the areas of the main functional zones. The functional zone of the production was greater than the ecological and the living functional zones. Specifically, the provinces with the largest production functional areas were Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, and Heilongjiang, all of which were above 20×10
4km
2. The provinces with the largest living functional areas were Shandong and Henan, which were 1.57×10
4km
2 and 1.56×10
4km
2, respectively. The ecological functional areas in Tibet and Inner Mongolia were relatively large. According to the attributes of the dominant factors in agriculture, five types of agricultural regional areas were identified: traditional plain grain-growing areas, mountainous and hilly grain-growing areas, neighboring urban non-grain production areas, stay away from urban non-grain production areas, as well as the forestry, animal husbandry and fishery integrated production agricultural areas. The dominant agricultural types were detected in 2853 counties in China. The differentiated pathways of the zoning and classification were proposed in the sustainable agriculture.