Applying a GIS‐based model to collect information on agricultural land‐use change in Beijing

Abstract

Agricultural land use in suburban Beijing has changed dramatically in the last decade. This paper utilised unique, county‐level spatial inventory dataseTs of land use in 1993 and 2004 to better quantify spatial configuration changes of main agricultural land‐use types in the suburban counties of Beijing. A revised centroid model was applied to explicitly capture, analyse and visualise centroidal coordinates of land‐use types in six typical suburban counties (samples) by geographic information system (GIS). Obvious displacements of corresponding centroids of agricultural land‐use types in the samples demonstrates that configurations of agricultural land use have been destroyed in different parts of suburban Beijing. Furthermore, some typical patterns are explored according to the direction of displacement, which is driven mainly by urbanisation, topography, economic development and land‐use policies. Land‐use policies are shown to play more direct roles in spatial configuration changes of agricultural land use than other factors. It can be concluded that agricultural land‐use configuration in suburban Beijing is affected by land resource balance among economic development, grain production and ecological protection.