Discussion on the Unified Survey and Evaluation of Cultivated Land Quality at County Scale for China’s 3rd National Land Survey: A Case Study of Wen County, Henan Province

Abstract

Under the task requirements of China’s 3rd national land survey on the grade determination of cultivated land, research on a reasonable and unified survey and evaluation system of cultivated land quality (CLQ) is of great importance. From the three dimensions of agricultural climate, production potential, and health status components of cultivated land, six factors are selected in this study to construct a set of simple, practicable, and operable county-level CLQ survey and evaluation system. These factors are climate conditions of cultivated land, soil characteristics, tillage conditions, the attributes of cultivated land type, environmental conditions, and biological activity. The developed survey and evaluation system meets the demands of national engineering for the inclusion and coordination of multiple departments based on the current evaluation system and evaluation methodology of all relevant land administrative departments. Wen County, Henan Province is used for field verification and evaluation. Results demonstrate that the average quality index of cultivated land in Wen County is 2196.33, ranging from 660.70 to 2802.96 with the largest area of the first-class and second-class land accounting for 20.98% and 52.61% of the county’s cultivated land, respectively; the third-class and fourth-class land, 12.63% and 13.78%. The obvious regional differentiation characteristics are presented along the boundary of Qingfengling with the quality of northern cultivated land higher than that in the south. The comparison with the results of the national utilization gradation in 2018 infers that they are in accordance with the distribution of CLQ, which bears a significant positive correlation trend with the measured grain output of the field. The constructed evaluation system serves as a rewarding attempt of a unified survey and evaluation of CLQ at the county scale to reflect the production capacity of local crops, realize the sharing of data platforms, save manpower and capital investment, improve the practical connection of supervision and management of cultivated land protection in different departments, and meet the requirements of current cultivated land protection and management.