Arable land spatial pattern analysis along the middle-lower of Dongjiang River, China

Regional land use change has been and will continue to be one of the hugest human impacts on the environment. Understanding the spatial configuration of urban areas will be important for quantifying dynamic change of land use. Arable land plays an important role in agricultural and economic development of China especially in Guangdong province. It is not only the basic material of crop production, but also the foundation and guarantee for implementing crop security. Based on the analysis of present situation of arable land, a land management policy for dynamic equilibrium of total arable land can be implemented. In order to understand the landscape pattern and the gradient characteristic of arable land along the middle-lower of Dongjiang River, we quantify the arable pattern with the combination of gradient analysis and landscape metrics. It is found that: (1) paddy land is the dominating land use type, the pattern of paddy land has strong effect on the whole landscape pattern, (2) The same metric value about different arable land use type has the obvious difference (3) Through out the gradient analysis, the metric chart of the arable land pattern has the inflexion near the borderline of the cities.