Morphology's importance for farmland landscape pattern assessment and optimization: A case study of Jiangsu, China

Farmland landscape pattern (FLP) is critical in ensuring sustainable agricultural production. Amidst the challenge of increasingly fragmented FLP, accurate assessment and optimization strategies are essential. Traditional FLP assessment studies lack significance in ecological representation because they ignore landscape types and their characteristics and overlook changes in landscape details based on overall results. These factors lead to uncertain assessment outcomes. This study introduces a farmland landscape classification system based on morphological spatial pattern analysis to address this. Special attention is given to the internal core and external edge farmland landscape types, resulting in an innovative FLP assessment system being developed. The results of the Jiangsu Province reveal significant patchiness and marginalization of core farmland, particularly worsening from north to south. While recent trends show a slight improvement in the overall situation and effective perforation suppression, challenges persist with low-value FLP expansions in each agricultural zone. This study emphasizes integrating external edge farmland and overall pattern protection for optimal FLP. The improved assessment method identifies areas for scale improvement and fragmentation risks, offering valuable insights for permanent basic farmland policy. Overall, this study enriches the analytical framework of FLP from a morphological perspective, aiding in precise assessment and tailored optimization strategies.