Abstract
To advance global change rssearch, it is essential to reconstruct changes in historical cropland coverage on a regional scale in China. This paper presents data collected from 244 local gazetteers, government statistical records and remote-sensing land cover data from the Shandong Province. The study reconstructed the spatial distribution of the rate of reclaimed land at the county level and compared this map with a map of the current spatial distribution of suitable cropland. The following conclusions were drawn: (i) The rate of cultivated land grew exponentially. The extent of reconstruction in cropland areas during the 17th century, 18th~19th centuries, the beginning of the 20th century, the 1980 s, and the beginning of the 20th century are 4.51 mha, 6.51 mha, 7.52 mha, 8.53 mha and 11.80–12.00 mha, respectively. (ii) Several agricultural centers formed during the late 17th century. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the reclamation rate increased rapidly near the four southern lakes, which are located in the Zaozhuang and Linyi regions. (iii) Most reclamation activities before the 19th century occurred in suitable agricultural areas, and the cultivated land was already reclaimed by the beginning of the 20th century.
Highlights
To advance global change rssearch, it is essential to reconstruct changes in historical cropland coverage on a regional scale in China
For Chinese historical land cover reconstruction, scholars often use the part of China that is included in the Global Land Use Database, which was established by the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin–Madison[2], the Historical Database of the Global Environment, which was produced by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency[6], and the PJ datasets, which were established by the Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany[4]
The cropland area increased from 4.50–5.50 mha to 6.00–7.50 mha during this period, which is an increase of 1.50–2.00 mha. ii) The second stage was a stable stage of cropland area changes
Summary
To advance global change rssearch, it is essential to reconstruct changes in historical cropland coverage on a regional scale in China. Zhang et al.[7] compared the reconstruction of Chinese cropland areas in traditional agricultural areas during the middle of the 17th century with the portion of China that is included in the aforementioned global data sets. The cultivation ratios in the global HYDE and PJ data sets appear to be lower than those in the Chinese regional data sets, which are based on historical cropland records. The popular global-scale reconstruction method is not always suitable for reconstruction of Chinese regional land cover[24]. It is important to strengthen the exploration of regional-scale reconstruction methods, establish a series of methods that are suitable for historical Chinese regional cropland cover reconstruction, and obtain regional cropland data sets. Reconstruction in China uses historical documents as the primary proxy data; these documents are tax unit records, not actual survey data, and contain more nonstandard descriptions than uniform statistical data
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