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Journal of Resources and Ecology >

2021 , Vol. 12 >Issue 2: 137 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2021.02.001

Preface

Land Use and Ecological Civilization: A Collection of Empirical Studies

  • XIE Hualin ,
  • CHEN Qianru
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  • Institute of Ecological Civilization, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China

XIE Hualin, E-mail:

Received date: 2021-01-06

  Accepted date: 2021-02-10

  Online published: 2021-05-30

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China(41971243)

The Science and Technology Project of Education Department in Jiangxi Province(GJJ200531)

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Abstract

The goal of ecological civilization construction is to realize the harmonious coexistence of human and nature. Land is the spatial carrier of ecological civilization construction. Land use types or behaviors reflect the level of intensive use of land resources, leading to different ecological environmental effects, thereby affecting the level of regional ecological civilization construction. This issue, “Land Use and Ecological Civilization”, discusses the theory and method of land use management in the view of ecological civilization from the aspects of land use efficiency, land use change, land multi-functional trade-off, land ecosystem service and land ecological risk by selecting 14 representative papers, providing practical reference for the formation of the land use mode and behavioral system of ecological civilization. With abundant research levels, this issue covers varied research scales such as village, county and province, various landform types such as plain and hill, and typical land use areas at home and abroad such as East China, Central China, Northwest China, Yangtze River Economic Belt and Japan. Being frontier and practical, the multidisciplinary research methods in this issue include literature research method, fractal theory, qualitative comparative analysis, VAR model, and econometrics, among others. Focusing on the prominent problems in the process of land use, this issue deeply discusses the hot topics such as land ecological efficiency, spatial behavior characteristics, land use structure optimization and ecological risk assessment. This issue not only reviews the current literature on urgent land use issues such as arable land abandonment and land use risk, but also tries to conduct trade-off and synergy analysis on the varied functions of the rural landscape and ecosystem, thus providing a theoretical and empirical basis for solving land use problems from the perspective of ecological civilization. This issue reflects the realistic urgency of guiding land use with the concept of ecological civilization, and provides theoretical guidance and technical support from the aspects of methods and research framework. Finally, this issue proposes five hot topics in the field of land use research from the perspective of ecological civilization in the future, namely, ecological management of land use structure, ecological evolution mechanism of land use process, land ecological use mode, early warning and regulation of land ecological security pattern, ecological management and control of land use behavior.

Key words： land use; ecological civilization; land use efficiency; land use change; land multi-functional trade-off; land ecosystem services; land ecological risk

Cite this article

XIE Hualin , CHEN Qianru . Land Use and Ecological Civilization: A Collection of Empirical Studies[J]. Journal of Resources and Ecology, 2021 , 12(2) : 137 -142 . DOI: 10.5814/j.issn.1674-764x.2021.02.001

1 Introduction

The goal of ecological civilization construction is to realize the harmonious coexistence of human and nature. Land is the spatial carrier of ecological civilization construction, the home for our survival, development, and the reproduction and sustainable development of the Chinese nation. In recent years, due to some unreasonable land use patterns or behaviors, land pollution and ecological damage have become increasingly serious. On the one hand, facing the increasing demand for construction land, in order to meet the requirements of Cultivated Land Requisition-Compensation Balance Policy, some important ecological land, such as coastal beach and wetland, is threatened by agricultural development. Over-exploitation of ecological land will lead to disastrous consequences such as biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, and reduced ecological regulation ability. On the other hand, the excessive use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the land use process leads to the increasingly prominent problems of soil environmental safety and non-point source pollution in China. The National Soil Pollution Survey Bulletin released on April 17, 2014 revealed the un-optimistic state of the national soil environment in China, and the over-standard rate of soil points in China had reached 16.1%. Among all the land use types, the over-standard rate of cultivated land was relatively higher, having reached 19.4%.
In view of the serious land ecological destruction and pollution in China, it is particularly important to carry out research on land use management from the perspective of ecological civilization. The Chinese government has proposed to “vigorously promote ecological civilization construction, optimize the pattern of territorial space development, and build a scientific and reasonable pattern of urbanization, agricultural development and ecological security”. Constructing the ecological land use security pattern has become one of the important national strategies in China, which points out the direction for the theoretical research and regional practice of land use management from the perspective of ecological civilization. The connotation of ecological civilization includes ecological institution guaranteed by modernization of the governance system and capacity, ecological economy focused on industrial ecologization and ecological industrialization, ecological environment centered on improving ecological environment quality, ecological lifestyle aimed at green, recycling and low-carbon lifestyle, an ecological society system based on ecological values, and ecological security targeted to a benign cycle of the ecosystem and effective prevention and control of environmental risks (Fig. 1). Determining how to form the land use mode, behavioral and institutional system in view of ecological civilization is an urgent task of land resource management for China in the new era.
Fig. 1 Connotation of ecological civilization
Land use is closely related to ecological civilization construction (Fig. 2). As the constraints on land resource carrying capacity tighten, it is crucial to implement the notion of ecological civilization into land use pattern and process to achieve multiple goals, including sustainable economic development and environmental improvement, and the coordinated regional development in China.
Fig. 2 The relationship between land use and ecological civilization
Therefore, this issue “Land Use and Ecological Civilization” discusses the theories and methods of land green use efficiency, land use change, land multi-functional trade-off, land ecosystem services, and land ecological risk from the perspective of ecological civilization by selecting 14 representative papers. This issue aims to optimize the territorial spatial pattern, improve the green and efficient use of land resources, promote the protection and restoration of a “life community” system of mountains, rivers, forests, farmland, lakes and grass, construct and perfect the land ecological compensation mechanism, improve the level of ecological civilization construction, guarantee regional ecological security, and provide practical reference for human beings to provide more ecological well-being.

2 Land use efficiency

By measuring the use efficiency of arable land, urban land and industrial land, we can analyze the saving potential of land resources (Xie et al., 2016; 2018a; 2018b). The evaluation of land use efficiency also contributes to the improvement of regional ecological and environmental performance. It is also the frontier topic of management science, regional economics, land science and others (Ge et al., 2021). Ecological efficiency (i.e., eco-efficiency) is an instrument used for sustainability analysis, which reflects the technical level and capacity of a regional production system experiencing high economic growth but with minimal natural resource and environmental degradation. Li et al. (2021a) evaluate the eco-efficiency of 30 Chinese provinces during 2005-2016 by a super-SBM model incorporating undesirable outputs, and study the key factors influencing the efficiency using a panel regression model. Shi and He (2021) measure the urban land use efficiency of 275 prefecture-level cities in China during 2003-2016 by an SBM-undesirable mode, and explore the temporal and spatial evolution of urban land use efficiency through Kernel density estimation and spatial autocorrelation analysis. In their paper, they accurately define “urban land use efficiency”, and explore the characteristics of urban land use efficiency evolution between regions and within a region. This study provides support for strengthening the connotation of urban land stock and regional cooperation mechanism.
As one of the main factors reducing cultivated land use efficiency, cultivated land abandonment, seriously wastes land resources. The identification of driving forces and influencing factors helps to elucidate the mechanisms of abandonment formation, and provides a scientific basis for the construction of regional land use pattern change models and the spatial evaluation of abandonment risk. When studying the driving forces of cultivated land abandonment, attention should be paid to the interactions between driving forces and their specific backgrounds. In addition, macro, meso and micro scales should be fully covered in studying the driving forces (Chen and Xie, 2021).

3 Land use change

Land use and coverage change (LUCC) has been considered as a very important factor in the study of environmental/ecological protection and global environmental changes (Xie et al., 2017). In the process of land use change, the multi-scale synthesis of functional transformation, the multi-element coupling between the transformation processes and the multi-factor coupling among other urban and rural development factors are of great research value (Tu et al., 2021).
Ecological land is an important carrier of natural resources, the basis for the development of forestry production, and the fundamental factor for enhancing ecological protection and achieving sustainable economic development and protection (Xie et al., 2015; Xie et al., 2017). During the rapid economic development and urbanization in China, large amounts of ecological land have been occupied, which results in ecological function losses. These have mainly resulted from the interactions of natural, social and economic factors such as topography, population, and industrial structure. The explanatory power between any two driving factors was greater than that of any individual driving factor. In addition, driving factors have different impacts on ecological land change in different geographical locations (Zhou et al., 2021).
Landscape morphology reflects the spatial behavior of land use, and landscape changes in the ecological sense reflect the changes that have taken place in the landscape structure, thus defining the direction of regional planning based on sustainable landscape ecology. The landscape shapes of land use are derived from complex geographic phenomena and show the typical fractal performance. Focusing on the changes of landforms caused by human land use spatial behavior, fractal theory is applicable to the study of land use spatial behavior. He’s (2021) research in Poyang Lake Area verified the effectiveness of fractal theory in explaining the spatial behavior characteristics of land use.
In the new era, using big data to explore the mechanism of regional land use change and assess its ecological environmental effects will help provide strategies for improving regional ecological security.

4 Land multi-functional trade-off

Research on land use process simulation and trade-offs between multi-functions contributes to identifying the potential conflicts among competing land functions, balancing conflicting multi-dimensional interest goals, and maximizing comprehensive benefits between current and future, local and global, and primary and secondary goals. The selectivity of human utilization of land functions complicates the relationships between land functions, which are manifested by “tradeoffs” and “synergies”. Thus, tradeoff means that the growth of one function leads to the reduction of another function. Synergy refers to the simultaneous increase or decrease of two or more functions (Qiu and Turner, 2013).
On the one hand, studies regarding the trade-offs and synergies among different ecosystem services remain relatively weak (Fu and Yu, 2016; Peng et al., 2017). An enhanced study of the trade-offs and synergies among different mountain areas, and a promotion of the sustainable utilization and maximal integrated benefits of ecosystem services in mountain areas are hotspot issues for current governmental and academic attention (Feng et al, 2021). On the other hand, the quantitative analysis of landscape multi-function and its trade-off and synergetic relationships is a hot topic in landscape ecology (Ren et al., 2021). Clarifying the temporal and spatial characteristics of the relationships between tradeoff and synergy among the rural landscape multi-functions has become one of the core points for promoting the overall benefits of regional functions, guiding the rational exploitation of landscape resources, and achieving economic development and ecological protection in a win-win situation (Pan and Li, 2017; Wang et al., 2018).
Land use structure optimization is one of the core contents of land multi-functional trade-off research. It aims to reach certain ecological and economic goals, and also to design, combine, and lay out a land use structure in an area based on the characteristics of the land (Kaim et al., 2018). Currently, the expansive effect caused by rapid economic growth, and the repressive effect resulting from ecological environment constraints are the main factors to target in land use structure optimization in China (Li et al., 2021b).

5 Ecological risks of land use

Land security refers to a stable state of land when the drivers reach a balance in the processes of material circulation and energy transformation (Kuang, 2021). Land ecological security emphasizes on the health status of the land ecosystem, while ecosystem risk regards land use activities as the source of the risk threats, and focuses on the possibilities and consequences of security problems (Xie, 2012). Land use/cover change (LUCC) is closely related to ecological risk and plays a decisive role in regional ecological risk (Turner et al., 2013). As the basic unit of human activities, landscape can be used as an important scale for studying the human-environment coupling system in ecological risk assessment (Peng et al, 2015; Li et al., 2018). Studies on the impact of human activities on the environment remain at the stage of quantitative simulation and prediction in the process of integrating nature and humanity at the local, national, regional, and global scales. Coupling landscape structure, functions, and processes to ecological risk assessment, and focusing on the combination of human well-being, landscape multifunctional trade-off decision-making, and risk management policy design is an important direction for future research. Coupling landscape functions and ecological risk assessment provides a scientific basis for advancing the field of ecological risk management and the optimization of space of the national land, which is necessary to strengthen relevant theories and practices (Lin et al., 2021).
With the wide application of the theories and methods of landscape ecology, ecological risk assessment based on landscape pattern has become one of the hotspots of regional ecosystem management. Ecological risk is a spatialized variable, and the analysis of its spatial characteristics helps to reveal the mechanisms and trends of ecological process (Xie et al., 2013).
The early warning mechanism for land-use ecological security can effectively forewarn the ecological threats derived from land use, thus helping decision makers to prevent risks in advance (Xie et al., 2020a).

6 Land ecosystem services

Under the current severe depletion of land use, land ecosystem services research evaluates the sustainable governance on the natural resource shortage, serious environmental pollution and ecosystem degradation (Xie et al., 2020b). Research on land use and ecosystem services has started late in China, but its overall developing trend is fast. The research themes are distinct and prominent with a close relationship between them. Currently, the hot topics mainly include ecosystem service value assessment (Zhou et al., 2020), land use change (Li et al., 2021c), ecosystem service and its functions (Feng et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021d) and land ecology (Inagaki et al., 2021).
The field of land ecosystem services integrates varied disciplines, including natural and humane disciplines. Models and technologies regarding ecosystem service value evaluation in the field of natural science are relatively abundant and mature, while research on the human driving factors is still insufficient. The ultimate goal of ecosystem service research is to improve human well-being. Therefore, in addition to land use planning and related issues, determining how to apply ecosystem service research to the improvement of human well-being needs more attention.

7 Discussion and conclusions

With abundant research levels, this issue covers varied research scales such as village, county and province, various landform types such as plain and hill, and typical land use areas at home and abroad such as East China, Central China, Northwest China, Yangtze River Economic Belt and Japan. Being frontier and practical, the multidisciplinary research methods in this issue include literature research method, fractal theory, qualitative comparative analysis, VAR model, econometrics and others. Focusing on the prominent problems in the process of land use, this issue deeply discusses the hot topics such as land ecological efficiency, spatial behavior characteristics, land use structure optimization and ecological risk assessment. This issue not only reviews the current literature on urgent land use issues such as arable land abandonment and land use risk, but also tries to conduct trade-off and synergy analysis on the varied functions of the rural landscape and ecosystem, thus providing a theoretical and empirical basis for solving land use problems from the perspective of ecological civilization. This issue reflects the realistic urgency of guiding land use with the concept of ecological civilization, and provides theoretical guidance and technical support from the aspects of methods and research framework.
By discussing the theories and methods of land green efficiency, land use change, land multi-functional trade-off, land ecosystem services, and land ecological risk, this issue provides a reference and basis for the developmental direction of land use from the perspective of ecological civilization. By taking undesirable output into account, the results of land use efficiency evaluation are more practical with a greater guidance value to ecological land use. Land ecological change involves changes of form, function, behavior characteristics and structure, among others. In the process of land use change, a set of land use optimization methods for the coordinated development of ecology, economy and society should be put forward according to its application, function and characteristics. Quantitatively studying the trade-off relationships between land functions is difficult, and it currently mainly relies on scenario analysis. Future studies may try to reveal the mechanism of trade-off and synergy, which would promote its application in the land use field. In the field of land ecological risk, exploring an ecological risk management and methodology which integrates natural and humane processes is promising. Coupling landscape structure, function and process to ecological risk assessment, and combining it with human well-being, multi- functional trade-off and the design of risk management and control policy, is an important research direction. Based on current studies, this issue proposes five hot topics in the field of land use research from the perspective of ecological civilization in the future, namely, ecological management of land use structure, ecological evolution of land use process, ecological mode of land use, early warning and regulation of land ecological security pattern, and ecological management and control of land use behavior (Fig. 3).
Fig. 3 Hot topics of land use research in view of ecological civilization

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