Abstract: Rapid economic development, industrialization, and urbanization aggravates the tense relationship between human beings and the land. With multiple demands for food security, ecological protection and economic development, frequent conflicts and competition occur between multiple different functional land types. The current land use classification system focuses on the productive and living functions of land, but gives little consideration to ecological functions. This study builds a national Ecological-Living-Productive Land Classification System based on land functions emphasizing the concept and position of ecological land. So-called ecological land uses are types of land use regulating, maintaining and protecting ecological security. The new land classification is more flexible for overall planning purposes and for making arrangements for ecological, living and productive land spaces. The Ecological-Living-Productive Land Classification System includes three levels. The first level has four major types: ecological land, ecological-productive land, productive-ecological land, and living-productive land. The second level subdivides the major types into 15 functional land categories, including major ecological regulation land, common ecological regulation land, and ecological conservation land for ecological lands; pasture land, timber land and aquaculture land for ecological-productive lands; arable land and orchard for productive-ecological lands; and urban built-up area, rural living land, and industrial land for living-productive lands. The third level is based on land cover types. Based on multiple data sources, and using a strategy of zoning and re-classification, we extracted the spatial distribution of ecological-living-productive lands on a national scale. The areas of ecological land, ecological-productive land, productive land, and living-productive land area are 6,037,000 km², 1,353,800 km², 2,001,900 km² and 207,300 km², respectively; accounting for 62.89%, 14.10%, 20.85% and 2.16% of total area, respectively. For the second-level classification, the area of ecological conservation land is the largest, accounting for 20.17% of the total area. Ecological land is located mainly in central and western China. Ecological-productive land is distributed in various areas throughout the country, and productive-ecological land and living-productive land are concentrated in eastern China.

Key words: China, ecological land, ecological-living-productive land, land function, national scale, spatial distribution