Agricultural land system transition based on resilience and vitality: A case study on the Loess Plateau (Yulin, China)

Abstract

Agricultural land systems can undergo three types of changes: fluctuation, sustainable transition, and unsustainable transition. Developing targeted policies to promote the sustainable transition of agricultural land systems can provide guarantees for the achievement of sustainable development goals such as no poverty (SDG1), zero hunger (SDG2), and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems (SDG15). However, this requires a comprehensive framework to determine whether the transition of agricultural land systems is sustainable. Therefore, the Loess Plateau (Yulin), with its fragile ecological environment, long agricultural history, and tense human-environment relations, was selected as the case area to explore the characteristics, mechanisms, and regulatory pathways of agricultural land system transition, by constructing a conceptual framework that integrated system resilience and vitality. The results indicated that driven by socio-economic development (urbanization, economic growth, and technological innovation) and natural environmental changes (climate change and environmental change), agricultural land systems on the Loess Plateau underwent an unsustainable transition around 2013, which was regulated by national and local strategies and policies. The rapid improvement in system resilience was attributed to the human input subsystem (41 %) and the agricultural output subsystem (39 %), while the significant declining vitality was mainly maintained by the natural support subsystem. Therefore, enhancing the vitality of the human input subsystem and the agricultural output subsystem was a priority choice to promote the sustainable transition of agricultural land systems on the Loess Plateau. Under the new urbanization carried by counties and rural revitalization strategy, reducing agricultural labor force, improving agricultural mechanization level and utilization efficiency of agricultural chemicals (such as fertilizers, pesticides, and films), accelerating agricultural industry development and farmers' income increase, popularizing fallow rotation and climate intelligent agricultural management models would be effective measures to heighten the sustainability of agricultural land systems. Moreover, the analytical framework of agricultural land system transition presented in this study was feasible and credible, and had the potential to be applied in human-environment systems and social-ecological systems.