title: China's Land-Use Changes during the Past 300 Years: A Historical Perspective.
abstract: Understanding the processes of historical land-use change is crucial to the research of global environmental sustainability. Here we examine and attempt to disentangle the evolutionary interactions between land-use change and its underlying causes through a historical lens. We compiled and synthesized historical land-use change and various biophysical, political, socioeconomic, and technical datasets, from the Qing dynasty to modern China. The analysis reveals a clear transition period between the 1950s and the 1980s. Before the 1950s, cropland expanded while forested land diminished, which was also accompanied by increasing population; after the 1980s land-use change exhibited new characteristics: changes in cropland, and decoupling of forest from population as a result of agricultural intensification and globalization. Chinese political policies also played an important and complex role, especially during the 1950s-1980s transition periods. Overall, climate change plays an indirect but fundamental role in the dynamics of land use via a series of various cascading effects such as shrinking agricultural production proceeding to population collapse and outbreaks of war. The expected continuation of agricultural intensification this century should be able to support increasing domestic demand for richer diets, but may not be compatible with long-term environmental sustainability.
authors: College of Remote Sensing and Geography, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China. miaolijuan1111@gmail.com.
authors: Lijuan
authors: L
authors: Miao
authors: State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. zhufeng314@mail.bnu.edu.cn.
authors: Feng
authors: F
authors: Zhu
authors: Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Halle (Saale) 06120, Germany. Sun@iamo.de.
authors: Zhanli
authors: Z
authors: Sun
authors: State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. john.moore.bnu@gmail.com.
authors: John C
authors: JC
authors: Moore
authors: College of System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. xuefeng.cui@ucd.ie.|School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. xuefeng.cui@ucd.ie.
authors: Xuefeng
authors: X
authors: Cui
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000266:history*; D002681:China; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history*; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000266:history*; D000072480:Farms / Q000266:history; D016468:Forestry / Q000266:history*; D065928:Forests; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century
keywords: China; driving factor; human-environment interaction; land use transition