Comprehensive Cultivated Land Quality Evaluation Based On RS And PRA

The Crisscross Region of Wind-drift Sand Regions along the Great Wall and Loess Plateau locates in southern Ordos Plateau and northern Chinese Loess Plateau, where wind erosion and water erosion coexist and specified environmental and socio-economic factors, especially human activities induce serious land degradation. In addition, this area locates at the agriculture and pasturage interlaced zone and the complex land use make the ecosystem under great pressure, so this is a typical Ecological Vulnerable Area. It is necessary to carry out corresponding land use policy to make sure cultivated land resource use sustainable. The precondition for this work is the establishing the precise, practical and efficient cultivated land quality assessment indicator and method system. This paper takes Hengshan County, in Northern Shanxi Provence, as a case study, in order to developing a comprenhensive cultiveatd land quality assessment indicator and method system,which bases on RS and related high and new-technology.This paper contains four parts: farmers'perceptions about cultivated land quality; study on comprehensive cultivated land quality based on RS data and farmers indicators; the relationship between land quality and cultivated land use types and social-economic; policy suggestions to cultivated land quality sustainable land management.Farmers evaluated cultivated land quality by slope, water availability, soil texture, yields, amount of fertilizer, crop performance.In this study, slope information was abstracted form DEM; SVMI, MSAVI, SARP was got from ETM image; FBI was integrated from social-economic statistic data. Then, those indicators were applicated to refleting farmers'indicators and the integrated assessment indicator system considering soil, topography, vegetation, environmental hazards, social-economic factors and land managements was build up. Three indexes, namely Production Press Index (PPI), Land State Index (LSI) and Farmer Behavior Index (FBI) were integrated to measure different aspects of land quality. A model was further derived from the three indexes to explore the overall land quality of the study area. Respectively in the county scale, township scale and household scale, the effects of land use, social-economic development and farmer'management measures on cultivated land quality are discussed. At last, according to evaluation result, the county is made into four parts, namely Northern sand erosion zone, irrigated zone along the rivers, Hilly and Gully zone of Loess Plateau and the Southern drought zone on Plateau, with relevant suggestions on cultivated land resource protection discussed.The conclusions come into that: Farmers have basic ability to get the rational cultivated land quality information according to their own cultivated land quality indicator system; MSAVI, SVMI, SARP are competent for their works in differentiating dissimilar cultivate land and can be used as the remote sensing indicator in cultivated land quality assessment; LSI, PPI and FBI woked well in reflecting cultivated land quality status, the ecologic press and sustainability in land management.