Farmland Suitability Evaluation Oriented by Non-Agriculturalization Sensitivity: A Case Study of Hubei Province, China

Abstract

Farmland is one of the key factors affecting national or regional food security, and farmland suitability evaluation can provide critical information for the spatial layout of farmland. Previous studies have mainly focused on the role of natural factors in suitability evaluation, while ignoring the important influence of socio-economic activities. This study selects natural factors such as elevation and slope and non-agriculturalization sensitivity factors to build a farmland suitability evaluation framework of “natural non-agriculturalization sensitivity”, quantify the farmland suitability, and uses GIS technology to classify the evaluation results into four levels: highly, moderately, barely, and unsuitable. The results show that the non-agriculturalization sensitivity of farmland in Hubei Province shows the spatial characteristics of multi-point clustering, with density increasing from west and north to central and east; the overall farmland suitability in Hubei Province is high, and the areas of highly, moderately, barely, and unsuitable farmland account for 2.32%, 67.69%, 11.49%, and 18.50%, respectively. In terms of spatial distribution, there are obvious spatial differences in the farmland suitability, with highly and moderately suitable areas mainly distributed in the central and eastern regions and barely suitable and unsuitable areas mainly distributed in the western, northeastern, and southeastern parts of Hubei Province.