Spatial-temporal pattern differentiation and influencing mechanism of land reclamation in China

A large quantity of land resources have been damaged due to intense human activities and natural disasters, such as mining operation, infrastructure construction, and landslide. The expectation to restore the function of the degraded land is increasingly drawing much attention from both publics and governments. After decades' efforts, there is still a heavy task of land reclamation that needs to be finished in China. Due to the strong regional differentiation, the situation of land reclamation in each province is different from others. In order to reduce the regional differences with a purpose of promoting the land reclamation in China, it is essential to explore the spatial-temporal pattern differentiation and influence mechanism of land reclamation. This paper took 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous districts in China as research area to reveal the spatial pattern of the quantity of land reclamation and its influence factors. The considered factors included the economic, social, technical, institutional and natural conditions. Data were collected from related statistical yearbook, published paper and China national knowledge internet (CNKI). We employed exploratory spatial data analysis to detect the spatial pattern of land reclamation in China. Besides, factor analysis was used to discover the public driving force of land reclamation. Panel data model was used to quantify the influence of different factors on the quantity of land reclamation in different regions. It could be found that: 1) The quantity of land reclamation in China was featured by a weak spatial autocorrelation and three-grade distribution pattern, and it showed a spatial nonstationary process with inter-annual instability from 1999 to 2013. This pattern was partly in accordance with the economic development and affected by some factors such as the distribution of mineral resource and differentiated land reclamation policies; 2) Due to the weak spatial aggregation, only one area with H-H (high-high) clustered reclamation was detected in eastern China (the center was Jiangsu Province), and not any other significant hot area was been found; 3) The 3 public factors mainly affecting land reclamation were mission, drive and support respectively. It can be inferred that the most significant motive force of land reclamation in China is economic driving force, and the second force is mission of land reclamation. This indicates that, to some degree, the insufficient quantity of land reclamation cannot only attribute to the technical problem. Obviously, it is a synthesis problem related to other factors, especially the economy. For eastern China, land reclamation is mainly driven by the pressure of land resource shortage and economic attraction. Central China is also suffering from the pressure of land resource shortage, but its land reclamation is negatively affected by the ongoing mining activity. In western China, there is more mission of land reclamation, but the natural condition acts as a significant limiting factor. Based on the results above, some policy suggestions, such as improving the mission-driving mechanism, reforming the guidance of policy, enhancing the transfer of technology and coordinating land reclamation project, have been proposed. The results and conclusions above are expected to provide reference for the planning and management of land reclamation.