Optimization of agricultural planting structure in irrigation areas of Heilongjiang province considering the constraints of water resource system resilience

Abstract

From the perspective of sustainable development in irrigation areas, imperfect constraints, which have negatively impacted previous agricultural planting structure optimization models, tend to produce unreasonable optimization results. Thus, in this paper, attempts are made to incorporate the resilience of water resource systems into the constraint set and explore the optimal layout of agricultural planting structures in irrigation areas. We selected 12 sample irrigation areas in Heilongjiang Province, China, including Chahayang, Fuyu, and Tailai, as the research areas and considered their actual situations. Then, we established a multiobjective optimization model for an agricultural planting structure with rice, soybean, and corn planting areas as decision variables; socioeconomic benefits, agricultural production benefits, ecological benefits, and water resource benefits as objective functions; and water resource system resilience and net crop output value and other factors as constraints. Fifteen scenarios were assessed through the combination of objective functions, and the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm III (NSGA-III) was used to optimize and analyze the agricultural planting structure of typical irrigation areas in Heilongjiang Province and to determine the optimal planting plan. The research results found that the function values adjusted by planting area have significantly improved compared to those before optimization. The adjustment trend of agricultural planting area is to increase the planting area of rice and soybean and reduce the planting area of corn. The introduction of constraints on water resource system resilience ensures that other benefits remain basically unchanged; thus, the water resource objective function is significantly better with resilience constraints than without them. Therefore, water resource system resilience can act as an effective constraint; this finding enriches and expands the theoretical and methodological system for optimizing the management of agricultural planting structures in irrigation areas and thus provides important technological support for ensuring regional food security, ecological security, and water security, which has substantial practical significance.