Reconstruction of the spatial distribution of historical farmland in the Taiwan Province of China for 1659–1945

Abstract

The reconstruction of historical land use/land cover change (LUCC) in Taiwan Province based on multisource data is of great significance for obtaining an in-depth understanding of the driving mechanisms of LUCC and their effects on the environment and climate. Four rules, spatial restriction, land suitability, directing distribution, and size-control rules, were adopted as indicators to construct a directing probabilistic model for historical land reclamation. After adjusting the model, historical farmland was reassigned in descending order of the land reclamation directing probabilities given by the model. Finally, a high-resolution gridded dataset (100 m × 100 m) on the farmland of Taiwan Province during 1659–1945 was reconstructed. The results showed that (1) a general trend of continued growth of the farmland area in Taiwan Province over the past 300 years was observed; the ratio of reclaimed land was the earliest and highest in Tainan, which agreed with the historical farmland reclamation facts that Tainan was the pioneering area to be reclaimed, followed by Taichung, Taipei, and Taitung. (2) Geographic information elements across different historical periods can serve as important fundamental parameters for the quantitative reconstruction of historical LUCC, and its incorporation into the decision-making process of the model can effectively improve the model accuracy. (3) Correlation analysis between county-level population and farmland area, grid-level modeling result and farmland interpreted from maps have shown well consistent, which demonstrated the rationality of the reconstruction results.