Abstract
Urban land has increasingly expanded and encroached upon a significant number of paddy fields in Hang-Jia-Hu Plain, due to the rapid socio-economic development and agro-pedoclimatic conditions favorable to rice cultivation and human settlement. Although many studies have analyzed the characteristics of urban land expansion, relatively less attention has been paid to exploring the various urban expansion patterns and the impact of different urban expansion patterns on paddy field at a regional scale. This paper characterized the changing patterns of paddy fields in response to various urban expansion patterns in the Hang-Jia-Hu Plain integrating geographic information systems, gradient analyses and landscape metrics. Our results demonstrate that the amount of urban land expanded to nearly four times that of the initial area during 1980–2010 and that 88% of new urban land was developed on paddy fields. Of the total area of paddy fields, paddy fields of level I accounted for 96%. Moreover, various urban expansion styles differentially influenced the patterns of paddy fields. In autonomous expansion cities, sprawled urban land mainly occupied paddy fields in urban centers. However, the irregular expansion of passive expansion cities encroached on a number of paddy fields in the urban fringe where the landscape of urban patches and paddy fields was more complex and irregular in shape. Furthermore, the urbanization curve implies that future urbanization efforts will focus on the passive expansion cities, indicating that paddy fields still face the risk of disruption. We suggest that the boundary of urban development should be restricted, permanent paddy reserves should be delimited, and ecologically oriented management systems that target paddy field protection should be implemented to ensure the sustainable development of this region. This work improved the understanding of the urbanization process that governed paddy fields dynamics, and provides a scientific basis for decision-making processes to achieve regional sustainability.
Highlights
IntroductionIn China, urban growth has occurred at an unprecedented rate after the “Open Door Policy” ( called “the reform and opening-up policy”, it is considered the turning point of Chinese economic development) in 1978
In China, urban growth has occurred at an unprecedented rate after the “Open Door Policy” in 1978
This paper reports a practical methodology of characterizing the spatiotemporal dynamic pattern of urban expansion and exploring the changing pattern of paddy fields in response to rapid urbanization in the Hang-Jia-Hu Plain, which is undergoing rapid changes in land use as a result of drastic paddy field loss
Summary
In China, urban growth has occurred at an unprecedented rate after the “Open Door Policy” ( called “the reform and opening-up policy”, it is considered the turning point of Chinese economic development) in 1978. Rapid urban development has been accompanied by the large-scale conversion of cultivated land for development use, which has led to severe environmental issues, such as urban heat islands, air pollution, and urban flooding [5]. These adverse effects generate complex human-dominated landscapes, which significantly affect the functioning of local and global ecosystems as well as the services they provide to humans and other organisms [6,7]. Rapid urbanization is one of the most serious problems affecting China’s food security It has degraded the landscapes of paddy fields and impacted their capacity to deliver ecosystem services [10,11,12]. Research has revealed that paddy fields have experienced sharp declines in rice production of 600 ton/km2/year [13], and the value of their ecosystem services has decreased by 250 million yuan/km2 [14]
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