Abstract
Cropland expansion has become a prominent feature in developing countries and regions. A comprehensive clarification of the causes of cropland expansion is conducive to the adoption of appropriate actions to intervene and adapt to climate change, support rational land use, and balance ecosystem services. Using the Pumqu River Basin (PRB) in the Tibetan Plateau as the study area, we constructed a conceptual model that emphasizes the role of households and explored the causes of cropland expansion based on field survey data. Our results indicate that households’ perception of climate change, families’ non-agricultural income, the numbers of agricultural labor force, and the population pressure faced were the causes of cropland expansion in the PRB. Based on these findings, corresponding policy recommendations to limit the spontaneous cropland expansion behaviors of local households and reduce the ecological loss caused by cropland expansion are proposed.
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Notes
The four models are the following: the Driving Force-Land Change model (DF-C), Driving Force-Actor-Land Change model (DF-A-C), Driving Force/Actor-Land Change model (DFA-C), and Actor-Land Change model (A-C).
Since most households in the TP are smallholders, cropland change in this area is often the cumulative result of smallholders’ decisions, and the underlying drivers constitute the factors that affect these decisions. Therefore, the conceptual model in this paper was based on the assumption of the following event chain: the driving forces affect actors and actors subsequently cause change.
In China, farmers only have the right to manage the cropland; the ownership of the cropland belongs to the village collective.
Two rounds of GTGP have been conducted in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The first round started in 2002 and ended in 2009, and the second round has been in enacted since 2015. According to statistics from the Tibet Forestry Information Network (http://www.xzly.gov.cn/article/4651), a total of 3.19 × 104 ha of cropland were converted to forest since the implementation of the GTGP in the Tibet Autonomous Region from 2002 to 2018.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the editors and two anonymous reviewers for the valuable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.
Funding
This work was supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research (No. 2019QZKK0603), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41761144081 and 41601089), the Open Foundation of Hebei Key Laboratory of Wetland Ecology and Conservation (No. hklk201909), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. SWU119037).
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He, X., Yan, J. & Cheng, X. Household perspective on cropland expansion on the Tibetan Plateau. Reg Environ Change 21, 21 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01752-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-021-01752-8