Farming and forestry land use changes in China and their driving forces from 1900 to 1980

Abstract

A variety of agricultural and forestry land use materials, especially those in the first half of 20th century, were collected. According to land use change in this period, the whole country is demarcated into seven regions, Northeast China, North China, Northwest and Loess Plateau, Southeast and Coastal Region, Southwest China, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang, in proper order by using Cluster Analysis. The farming and forestry land use change in these regions were analyzed. The results show that the total cultivated land areas increased in this period, especially in the 1950s and 1960s the cultivated land area increased more significantly, but differed in different regions, and the most rapid increasing rate was 2.63 percent a year. On the other hand, the forestry land area was increasing in most parts of this period, especially after 1949. But in most regions, the decrease of forestry land area at the end of 1970s is also very obvious. It is regarded that the population increase, food production, natural disasters and some related government policies were among the main driving factors for farming and forestry land use change.